Looking at Kevork Mourad’s works is like slipping into a dream. Monochrome drawings of figures and architecture meld into swirling panoramas on canvas, which Mourad often cuts and layers into intricate portals that beckon close inspection. These dense worlds showcase the beauty and tragedies on land that has witnessed waves of love, war, regrowth—histories of civilization tearing apart and reattending to itself.

For Mourad, a descendant of Armenian refugees who fled to Syria during the Ottoman-perpetrated genocide, what’s past still haunts the present, and necessitates wrestling with. “I’m always addressing the idea of urgency, destruction—how so many ancient places have been demolished or erased,” he says. “The idea of layers is related to time; I’ve been exploring how I can take the concept of time, put it in something still.” A month in residence yielded what felt to him like almost a year’s work: Every day, after running, he’d enter the studio ready—“eyes, mind, and spirit so high from the light and surrounding beauty,” as he put it—to create deep into night. In a new environment, the trained printmaker experimented with dimensionality, keeping his canvas loose rather than stretching it, and by fraying the fabric. He also added color—specifically, a deep red inspired by the Armenian cochineal worm, historically used to produce vibrant dyes. “It gives a trace of violence,” he says. His focus was a large-scale tableau whose subjects tuck into themselves, like a peony’s folded petals: women lost in their own worlds amid ancient architecture.

“It’s trying to capture this nostalgia,” Mourad says. “When you see what’s happening in the world now — the war and killings — why are we destroying ourselves? I’m trying to create a sense of urgency for people to rethink how to address each other, to find more beauty instead of seeing the ugliness.” It’s an ethos he carried as he met people in Miami, such as Jaime Odabashian,a fellow Armenian who owns a rugmaking company. For Odabashian’s studio visit, Mourad, a skilled baker, quickly mixed his guest some dough with olive oil and cheese, and together, they broke bread.