No Provenance - Artist project by Issam Kourbaj

Archaeological artefacts, historical documents and photographs, personal belongings, casts, copies, found objects, fakes and forgeries, alongside newly commissioned contemporary artworks and moving images, are encountered without the texts that normally identify, contextualise, or authenticate them. About No Provenance is a major new artist project by Cambridge-based artist Issam Kourbaj (b. 1963, Syria), presented across the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology and The Heong Gallery. The exhibition begins with the disappearance of the label. Archaeological artefacts, historical documents and photographs, personal belongings, casts, copies, found objects, fakes and forgeries, alongside newly commissioned contemporary artworks and moving images, are encountered without the texts that normally identify, contextualise, or authenticate them. Drawn from museums, archives, private collections, and individual hands in Cambridge and beyond, they occupy the same unsettled ground. Some are accompanied by extensive documentation; others survive only as fragments of record, memory, or attribution. At the heart of No Provenance is a resonance between unprovenanced objects and undocumented people. While objects and people are not equivalent, both may become subject to systems that depend upon records, classification, and recognition. By suspending the labels through which objects are usually understood, the exhibition invites reflection on what it means to exist beyond, between, or outside such frameworks. As familiar distinctions become less certain, unexpected relationships emerge between objects, images, and viewers. Rather than presenting definitive answers, No Provenance opens a space for speculation, doubt, and multiple readings, inviting visitors to reconsider how authenticity, identity, knowledge, and belonging are constructed and maintained. Artists and makers represented in the exhibition The exhibition brings together works by Alfred Stieglitz, Alfred Wallis, Constantin Brâncuși, Issam Kourbaj, Kenji Umeda, Mary Kessell, Mourad Kourbaj, Sean Mackaoui, and Ursula Schulz‑Dornburg, alongside many unknown makers whose objects resist attribution. Participating Collections and Lenders No Provenance includes objects and works drawn from Cambridge University Library, Foundling Museum, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University Herbarium, Kettle's Yard, Lego Lost at Sea Project, Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, Museum of Cambridge, The Museum of Classical Archaeology, The Museum of Zoology, The Polar Museum, Sedgwick Museum, Whipple Museum of the History of Science, and private collections, including an object from Syrian human rights lawyer Mansour Omari. Issam Kourbaj said: “This project begins with objects whose histories are incomplete, contested, or absent. In thinking about them, I found myself reflecting on undocumented people, whose lives can also become defined by missing records. The exhibition does not equate objects with people; rather, it asks what systems of identification reveal, what they conceal, and who or what remains beyond their reach. Although these questions emerge from my own experience of displacement, they speak more broadly to ecological, social, and political realities, and to the fragile ways in which people, objects, and histories are recognised, valued, or overlooked.” Jimena Lobo Guerrero Arenas, Senior Curator for World Archaeology at MAA, said: “Working with Issam Kourbaj on No Provenance was a reminder of how much museums don’t know. The words ‘no provenance’ can hide all sorts of stories: paperwork lost, attributions uncertain, or histories that were never recorded in the first place. Bringing that uncertainty into the gallery allows us to be more open about how museum knowledge is made, and about the questions of ownership, care and return that follow.” Stephen Bennett, Keeper of The Heong Gallery, said: “It is not so long ago that people spoke of living in an Information Age. Today, it often feels as though we live in an age of over-information. We are surrounded by voices, human and technological alike, telling us what to think and how to respond. How refreshing, then, to encounter images and objects that refuse to explain themselves; to discover new connections and narratives within the unexplored territory between their material reality and our limitless imagination.” The Publication: An Artist Book The publication, in the form of an artist book, reveals a constellation of images drawn from the objects and artworks in the exhibition, with invited writers and poets responding to them. Conceived as an artwork in its own right, the book extends the exhibition into another register. In keeping with the principles of No Provenance , the texts appear anonymously within the body of the publication. Contributors are acknowledged collectively at the end, without indication of authorship. The structure invites a slower form of reading, allowing meaning to emerge through proximity, association, and encounter. Contributors to the publication Texts in the publication include contributions from Ahdaf Soueif, Alex Butterworth, Avi Shlaim, Bhanu Kapil, Emma Durrant Lennon, George Szirtes, Helen Mort, mandisa apena, Nadifa Mohamed, Preti Taneja, Ranjit Hoskote, Ruth Padel, Samar Yazbek, Sarah Howe, Selma Dabbagh, Somaia Abunada, Tice Cin, Xiaolu Guo, the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, The Heong Gallery, and Kettle's Yard. It also features an interview with Issam Kourbaj conducted by English PEN. Intervention at the MAA is supported by Louisa Macmillan. Publication supported by Stewart and Tamsin Wilkinson and published by This Side Up. Events programme There will be a full events programme to accompany the exhibition. Read more Toggle Performance / Live Art Digital Sculpture Painting Photography Film / Video Audio / Sound Mixed media Multi-disciplinary Installation