Our first encounters with Tawfik involved dance floors and anecdotes of friends and family that are intrinsically entangled with making work, woven with an invisible thread between the research texts and sensory interventions. His is a practice brimming with ways to collaborate and connect with others. Tender exchanges, sitting side by side, allowing ideas to expand and grow. What is the interior of a seed?

Imprints of leaf motifs and pomegranates are sprinkled through the text — frottage from the kitchen and gallery fireplaces — returning to surface matter amongst the words.

The best cross-pollinations can happen amongst the green or over shared food; together, but with time to sit with your own thoughts. Ok, and maybe some useful seeds sprout in the shower too. Ideas bubble up like sparkling water from a spring. This is the original source material.

Down there, underground, there is a total absence of light. It’s in this black on black that seeds germinate. Memories held in mother’s hand. Roots outstretched, the shoots search upward for dappled light and eventually swap the earthy odour (Below The Return) for more floral notes above ground (After The Return), on time for a Spring fling. There is a jannah جنة climbing up the stairs.

We’re interconnected; roots entwine, cables entangle, phones shudder when touching. Our cheeks blush cherise when the gaze is held just that second too long.

Attune sipping lips, attentive ears, and curious fingers to interweave beneath the armrest of the kissing bench. You may delve into someone else’s interior — unlock to look in and leave your own trace.



Tawfik Naas is a researcher based in London, whose work explores how historic trauma is carried, remembered, and transformed. His research borrows from ecological and cosmological systems to imagine alternative ways of witnessing the past — understanding it as something continually returning through us.

Recent solo exhibitions include Instead, It Bore A Tulip, Bolding, London (2025); and Chaos Is A Flower, San Mei, London (2024). On 9 May his new commission Manifestations For An Eternal Spring opens at Flatlands Projects, Bexhill, which follows on from (A Study) In Muddled Light.

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Photos: Rita Silva
© Tawfik Naas
Courtesy Kip, London