Eliyah Mesayer expands her imaginary state 'Illiyeen' in new Copenhagen exhibition

COPENHAGEN.- In Letters from a Huntress, Eliyah Mesayer’s first solo exhibition with NILS STÆRK, the artist continues her ongoing project Illiyeen, an imaginary state. Conceived as both a poetic nation and a conceptual manifestation, Illiyeen is brought into being through stories, rituals, and symbols. It has its own flag, uniforms, postal service, national anthem, and manifest, offering a place for those who exist between borders – between reality and fiction, politics and poetry.

Within the imagined geography of Illiyeen, the huntress appears as a traveler, messenger, and possible guardian. Her precise role remains unresolved, allowing her to move between different identities and meanings throughout the exhibition.

Through this figure, Mesayer extends her ongoing exploration of belonging, nationhood, statelessness, movement, and the idea of home into a more intimate and poetic register. The works become forms of communication and survival, carrying messages across uncertain distances.

At the heart of the exhibition is a new series of wall-hung works in the form of monumental black envelopes. Ordinarily intimate and commonplace, the envelope becomes at once a sculpture, a container, and the bearer of a message – one that may have been sent, received, or never opened. Constructed from large sheets of paper, the envelopes are closed with prominent seals. Each seal suggests both protection and inaccessibility: something has been entrusted to the envelope, yet its contents remain withheld.

Suspended from the ceiling a tent occupies the exhibition space as a form of temporary architecture. It may be the huntress’s camp, her home, or her hiding place. Erected and dismantled as she moves, it belongs to no fixed geographical location.

On the wall hangs a strung bow, accompanied by six scattered arrows whose arrowheads have been replaced by fountain-pen nibs. Poised between stillness and release, the bow evokes the huntress’s capacity to orient herself and defend herself. Its tension suggests the suspended moment before something happens – an invisible force directed through aim. As the instruments of hunting and writing merge, the arrow becomes a message sent towards an unknown recipient.

Together, the envelopes, tent, bow, and arrows create a space around a figure who remains physically absent. The huntress emerges through her traces: the shelter she inhabits, the instruments she carries, the letters she leaves behind, and what she has chosen to keep sealed.

Letters from a Huntress considers what it means to send something out into the world without knowing whether – or how – it will be received. It asks how a home, an identity, and a narrative might be formed through the traces one leaves behind.

Eliyah Mesayer is a Copenhagen-based visual artist of Bedouin heritage. Working across installation, performance, poetry, and works on paper, she balances on the threshold between reality and fiction, intertwining historical material with imagined narratives and dreamlike manifestations. Drawing on alchemical traditions, particularly the writings of Jabir ibn Hayyan, Mesayer explores transformation as both a material process and a conceptual method, creating encounters between different histories, symbols, and forms of knowledge.

Central to her practice is Illiyeen, an ongoing project conceived as an imaginary state – a place beyond geographical and national boundaries. Through stories, rituals, symbols, performances, and installations, Mesayer brings this imaginary state into being as a space between politics and poetry, fact and imagination. Within this evolving world, she examines how power, identity, history, and belonging are formed, distributed, and represented.