Stones Will Remain Stones: Ayman Kaake

MARS is delighted to present Ayman Kaake's debut commercial exhibition, Stones Will Remain Stones from 5^th August until 5^th September.

Stones Will Remain Stones draws from lived experience within patriarchal systems across the SWANA region, examining the social, religious, and political forces that shape queer existence. The works reflect on the pressures placed upon queer bodies to perform socially sanctioned roles, where acceptance is often conditional and authenticity carries profound personal consequences.

The exhibition asks what is surrendered when survival depends upon performance—through expectations of marriage, children, preserving family lineage, and concealing one's identity to maintain the appearance of social order. These pressures are sustained by systems in which faith, politics, and power become intertwined, transforming belief into a mechanism of control.

Rather than seeking acceptance or permission, the work refuses the premise that queer existence requires justification, confronting the contradictions of societies that celebrate morality while criminalising love and policing the body.

Ayman Kaake is a Lebanon-born, Naarm/Melbourne-based photo-media artist working across photography, video, and installation. His practice explores diasporic identity, memory, and queer experience through staged, cinematic imagery that blurs reality and fiction. Drawing on personal and political histories, his work reflects on displacement, belonging, and the intersections of religion and power. He has been selected as a finalist in the Bowness Photography Prize (MAPH) in 2024 and 2022,  and the National Photographic Portrait Prize (NPG) in 2025, 2023 and 2022.