On Oct. 2, 2018, Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to obtain documents related to his upcoming marriage. He was never seen in public again.

Khashoggi, then a columnist for The Washington Post, was ambushed and strangled by a Saudi assassination squad. His body was dismembered and disposed of in a way that’s never been publicly revealed.

A long-term resident of the United States, Khashoggi had written critically about the Saudi government and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In late 2019, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency concluded that bin Salman had ordered the murder. Khashoggi’s assassination led to a rift in American and Saudi relations, with President Joe Biden saying he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over the death when he took office in 2021. Khashoggi was posthumously named Person of the Year by Time Magazine in 2018 along with other journalists.

In response to news reports that followed Khashoggi’s assassination, artist Navine G. Dossos created “No Such Organization,” a series of 100 paintings that use icons and symbols devised by Dossos to visually represent technology, nation states, human rights organizations, law enforcement agencies and individuals related to Khashoggi. Each painting is a perfect square meter.

With “McLean,” a public artwork currently on display at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Dossos adapted “No Such Organization” for the ICA’s façade facing Belvidere Street.

“It is a really compelling look at how visualization functions in contemporary society,” says Chase Westfall, interim director of the ICA. “So much of how we experience the world is mediated through the media itself: publications, news programs and through symbolic forms of representation. Life is so much more complicated than these systems often allow for.”

In creating art inspired by Khashoggi’s assassination, Westfall says Dossos focused her work on “somebody who had dedicated his life to getting into some of the complex realities” of modern society.

“An icon always performs a dual role. It does represent, but it also signals the limits of representation. It also demarcates the end of what is meant to be represented,” Westfall says. “The piece performs that oversimplification that we are subject to as we try to navigate the world.”

Dossos’ work often deals with icons and their absence, the latter of which is called aniconism. Orientalism in the digital realm, geometry as information and decoration, aniconism in Islamic art and the uncertainty of truth are all themes found in the art of Dossos, who is based in Aegina, Greece, and London.

As Khashoggi’s death wasn’t caught on camera — only audio recordings exist of his execution — Dossos uses images to depict his murder for both “McLean” and “No Such Organization.”

“There is this really dark, heavy reality of his murder that is being represented through a system of symbols, pictograms, icons,” Westfall says. “My understanding is that series of paintings was produced in real time as events unfolded.”

The title of “McLean” holds more than one meaning: not only did Khashoggi live in McLean, Virginia, but it’s also the location of the CIA’s headquarters.

Westfall compares “McLean,” to last year’s exhibition “So it appears,” both of which were curated by former ICA curator Sarah Rifky. “So it appears” also featured work by Dossos and demonstrated how contemporary abstract art can serve as a way to investigate our current cultural moment.

“It can be a point of entry for a more complicated understanding of the world that we live in, the politics that we inhabit, the stakes around issues of commerce and globalism,” says Westfall. “That’s what all really good contemporary art offers: a kind of local aesthetic experience that can telescope into a more profound global understanding or human understanding.”

Navine G. Dossos’ “McLean” will be on display through June 9 at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, 601 W. Broad St. For more information, visit icavcu.org or call 804-828-2823.