Yves Dana at Smithson Plaza

Waddington Custot presents two of Egyptian artist Yves Dana’s iconic artworks – ‘Conversations secrètes’, 2001 and ‘Stèle’, 2022, on the Smithson Plaza in London’s St James’.

Born in Egypt and based in Switzerland, Dana’s distinctive artistic practice grew from a transformative trip to the Egyptian desert in 1996. There, immersed in the ancient traditions of stoneworking, Dana discovered new ways of incising stone. Layering textures to suggest the palimpsest quality of engraved stelae, his sculptures suggest fragments of a lost civilisation. They commemorate the act of leaving a trace, imbuing his work with a universal, rather than literal, significance and offering a poetic reflection on the passage of time.

This public placement compliments Dana’s solo exhibition at Waddington Custot, ‘Citadelle’, which runs 19 February–10 April 2025.