NADA New York

Matthew Asling
NADA New York
7 — 11 May, 2025
The Starrett-Lehigh Building
601 W 26th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10001

For NADA New York we are pleased to present Clay Tablets, a solo presentation by Matthew Asling. The exhibition will run concurrently with a solo exhibition by the artist in our Melbourne gallery.

Asling’s work is informed by his Assyrian-Australian identity, his family history of displacement and migration, and the history of Assyrian genocide and religious persecution. This history of displacement is woven into the fabric of his paintings, with Assyrian Neo-Aramaic script often stitched or ironed into their surfaces. The works are reflections on the notion of home, diaspora and the complexities of belonging.

The series for NADA revisits ancient Assyrian artefacts such as cuneiform tablets, votive objects, and architectural fragments, that have been removed from their original context and are now held in Western collections. Rather than reproducing these objects, the work focuses on reinterpreting them through contemporary materials.

Asling considers the ongoing relevance of cultural objects and the way they inform understandings of language, history, and identity. The work also acknowledges the history of cultural extraction, and how artefacts are often presented through institutional and colonial frameworks. By repositioning these forms within a contemporary context, the series explores how narrative can be revisited and extended through artistic practice. These works exist between historical reference and creative interpretation.

Asling explores how ideas of homeland are remembered, maintained, and constructed over time, particularly within diasporic communities. The works reference Assyrian historical geography, spanning the river valleys of Mesopotamia, the plains of Tur Abdin, and the mountains of Hakkari, where Asling's family originally hails from. This fragmented and often interrupted map continues to inform contemporary identity through oral histories, traditions, and inherited memory.

Asling employs a range of ready-made materials, such as tarpaulin, gauze and burlap, off-cuts, construction remnants, and worn textiles, in lieu of the traditional canvas. These materials function both as references to physical displacement and as symbols of ongoing preservation and reconstruction. Their embedded histories and weathered surfaces suggest a quiet continuity, reflecting the persistence of culture through periods of upheaval and change.

Asling is the 2023 recipient of the Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch Travelling Fellowship, and will undertake a six-month period of travelling research throughout the Middle East during the second half of 2025. Asling holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts.