Withdrawal of the Eye Past the Distant Mountains

7th millennium BCE: a deep blue appears in beads and burial objects across early settlements in Central and South Asia. The material moves through early trade routes from the mountains of Badakhshan in present-day Afghanistan.

Tracing the colour through language leads to the Persian word lājevard, used historically to refer to both the stone and its blue. The term is tied to the region where the mineral has been mined for millennia. From Persian the word travelled through trade and translation, shaping later terms such as lazur and azure. One of the earliest widely circulated names for blue follows the path of the stone itself. This work grows out of a long engagement with that material and the routes through which it circulates. Following the colour leads back to the stone, to the paths through which it travelled, and to the archives in which fragments of its history remain dispersed. This exhibition by Sahar Te follows the paths of the lapis trade routes from extraction, circulation and preservation.