Montague Contemporary is pleased to announce Sediments, a solo exhibition of new ceramic works by Brooklyn-based artist Dina Nur Satti, on view from May 7 through June 26, 2025. An opening reception will be held on Wednesday, May 7 from 6 to 8PM at the gallery’s Chelsea location.
In Sediments, Dina Nur Satti presents her Lotus Series, a deeply personal and historically rooted body of sculptural vessels inspired by a 3rd-century BC depiction of the Nubian god Apedemak, discovered at the Meroitic temple sites of Musawwarat es-Sufra and Naq’a in modern-day Sudan. In this ancient relief, Apedemak emerges as a lion-headed deity with a serpent’s body and human torso, rising from a lotus blossom—an image that becomes a central metaphor in Satti’s exploration of ritual, regeneration, and spiritual transformation.
The lotus flower—whose earliest fossil records date back to the Ice Age—is renowned for its resilience, growing from the dark waters of adversity into radiant bloom. In Nubian and ancient Egyptian cosmologies, the lotus symbolizes the afterlife and immortality. For Satti, the flower becomes a poetic framework for self-discovery and communal ritual.
Hand-built using the traditional coiling method, each vessel is shaped without machinery and polished by hand with a river stone. Satti’s deliberate use of red clay and matte black glaze evokes the visual language of ancient Kerma pottery from Sudanese Nubia. The repetition of horizontal layers in the sculptures echoes the upward movement of the lotus itself—rising, evolving, revealing.
ABOUT DINA NUR SATTI
Dina Nur Satti (b. 1987, Chad) is a Brooklyn-based ceramic artist and designer of Sudanese and Somali heritage. Raised in France and Kenya, she holds a B.A. in International/Intercultural Studies from Fordham University, with a focus on the Middle East and Africa. Her practice explores ancestral craft traditions, pre-colonial African societies, and the spiritual and communal role of clay.
Satti has participated in exhibitions internationally, including at the Triennale di Milano (2025), Petrie Museum in London (2024), and Efie Gallery in Dubai (2025), as well as at 1-54 Art Fair in New York and Marrakech. Her work has been featured in Vogue, Whitewall, Interior Design Magazine, Business of Home, and Architectural Digest Middle East, which named her to its AD100 list in both 2024 and 2025.
She has been an invited lecturer at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Gasworks, and has held residencies with Saint Heron and Palm Heights. Through her sculptural vessels, she investigates ritual, transformation, and cultural memory with a focus on hand-built techniques and esoteric symbolism.
