Barzakh approached the prompt by revisiting their early practice of narrative-driven deconstruction. The collar’s deliberate incompleteness—its skeletal frame left hanging—symbolizes the process of becoming, while the scoby leather stretches and tightens across the rods, fragile yet insistent, a continuity amid change and decay.

Based in the United Arab Emirates, Barzakh makes modern relics. Their name comes from the Arabic word barzakh—a state of liminality, an isthmus between worlds; the brand straddles the modern and ancient. Barzakh’s designs feature tusk-like ornaments and sand-blasted metallic finishes, evoking artifacts weathered by time and desert winds.

Barzakh collaborated with contemporary artist Majd Alloush to fabricate the collar. The scaffolding was welded from reclaimed steel and treated in an acid bath to create corrosion and surface texture. They then draped a raw scoby pellicle, which they had been growing over the course of a month, across the frame, where it contracted, shrunk, and eventually bound to the rods. At points of contact, the steel’s acidity stained the scoby leather, leaving visible traces of tension and transformation.