Echoes to omega draws inspiration from the ancient statue of Lady Sennuwy, an Egyptian noblewoman carved nearly 4,000 years ago. Unearthed from the sands of Kerma, this life sized one ton statue was originally carved in Egypt then transported over 1,000 miles south, almost 300 years later. This migration mirrors El Siddique’s journey as an immigrant from Sudan to Canada, where she grew up within the Sudanese diasporic community, and her eventual move to the United States as an adult.

Situated in the museum’s lower level, Echoes to omega resembles an Egyptian burial vault and serves as a contemplative space for quiet reflection, meditation, and observation. The installation features six ceramic reproductions of Lady Sennuwy, symbolizing a silent homage to migrant women and mothers who have journeyed across the globe for millennia. These busts sit lower than the platform on which viewers stand, echoing the original statue’s discovery, chest-deep in sand. Placed in steel basins and surrounded by a steel architecture, the busts are continuously dripped on by water, which collects in the basins below. Over time, this process rusts the steel, degrading the basins and discoloring the bisque fired busts. This process represents the eternal forces of water, oxidation, erosion, and entropy—forces that both ancient and modern empires succumb to.

At the back of the installation, a solitary fountain releases drops of water infused with Sandaliya oil onto a heated metal platform, creating a continuous cycle of evaporation and condensation. Sandaliya is a scent used in Sudanese Muslim burials, linking Echoes to omega to rituals of mourning and remembrance. Two video texts within the installation rework spells from the Amduat, an ancient Egyptian funerary text that charts the deceased’s journey through the afterlife, culminating in their daily rebirth with the rising sun. These texts explore the art of persuasion, delving into how language shapes political narratives and influences decision-making, underscoring the power of storytelling in shaping collective memory and identity.

El Siddique’s work collapses the distant past and the present moment offering a space to explore the echoes between history, mythology, creation, and entropy. In this installation, time reverberates, encompassing the brevity of a lifespan and the centuries long cycles of an empire rising and falling. Echoes to omega—a play on the phrase “Alpha to Omega” found in the Book of the dead and later the New testament—suggests that history and human experience do not follow a simple linear path from beginning to end. Instead, our lives and the lives of those before us echo, repeating with variations until they ultimately conclude.

This project received additional support from the Canada Council for the Arts and Manchester Craftsman’s Guild.