A detail of White Sea, an installation by Kim Salerno which is part of the exhibit “Tangles and Snarls” at The Chazan Gallery at Wheeler.

A few years ago, the Lebanese-born artist Annabel Daou took part in an unusual exhibit at the EFA Gallery in New York City. Called “Aporia,” the show consisted entirely of written descriptions of elaborate but non-existent artworks, including a plan to send a rocket full of stinger-less bees into outer space and another proposal to hang 30 disco balls inside the White House.

In a final absurdist twist, Daou and her fellow organizers also created a list of fictitious donors that included the Kennebunkport Junior League and the Global Satellite Network.

As it happens, the word “aporia” also turns up in “KNOT,” a sprawling multi-part installation that Daou has created for Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery. A rhetorical term that refers to a false confession of doubt or indecision, aporia was one of 12 words that Daou used as inspiration for the exhibit, which explores intertwined themes of art, language and history. The other words were sacrifice, muse, island, truth, place, game, trauma, object, domination, distance and that.

Yet unlike the earlier “Aporia” exhibit, “KNOT” aspires to be more than just a clever art-world joke.

In fact, Daou spent more than a year working on the project with another artist — the poet and critic David Markus. It was Markus’ job to supply the words, one at a time, over a 12-month period. Daou, in turn, used the words as the starting point for a series of rambling, improvisatory line drawings that eventually filled 12 notebooks. Since Daou was careful to start drawing again at the same point where she left off, the notebooks actually amount to one continuous “master drawing.”

Visitors to “KNOT” will find all 12 notebooks sitting neatly on a table just inside the Bell Gallery entrance. My advice: take a minute to leaf through at least some of them. Daou’s freewheeling drawing style, which toggles easily between abstract doodles, writing (in both English and Arabic) and more realistic scenes drawn from her own life, works especially well on a small scale. Indeed, looking at her notebooks feels a lot like delving into someone’s well-illustrated diary.

The rest of the exhibit consists of a single IMAX-size wall drawing — it fills about three-quarters of the gallery — that Daou created specifically for the Bell show. Like the notebook drawings, it consists of a continuous line of black ink, with each start and stop indicated by a tiny hand-scribbled time reference. (In an interview, Daou said the drawing took her about a week to complete.)

And like the notebook drawings, Daou’s wall drawing is constantly shifting and morphing, forming recognizable scenes one minute then trailing off into abstract swirls and doodles.

One passage, inspired by the word “sacrifice,” suggests a wall strafed by gunfire. Another area, inspired by the word “truth,” features a drawing of makeshift tightrope. A passage inspired by the word “aporia,” meanwhile, consists of a series of looping lines punctuated by words in English and pidgin-Arabic. (The result suggests an Arab-American dance-step diagram .)

Many of these images have special meaning for Daou, who grew up in Beirut during Lebanon’s brutal, decades-long civil war. Daou’s fascination with language also dates back to her childhood: her parents ran one of Beirut’s most successful English-language bookstores.

Fortunately, gallery-goers who don’t know much about Daou or her work are in luck. As part of the exhibit, the gallery is handing out pocket-size catalogs — one per customer — that outline many of the themes and ideas behind “KNOT.” There’s also a fold-out copy of Daou’s large gallery drawing, along with a list of the 12 keywords suggested by Markus.

Still, even with the catalog in hand, the job of parsing out the exhibit’s many meanings and references is something of a chore. (When artists basically need their own version of CliffsNotes to express their ideas, you know you’re in trouble.) Even the show’s title, which plays on the various meanings of “knot” and “not,” can seem too clever for its own good.

As for Daou’s drawing skills, they seem to ebb and flow, with some passages — notably those on the gallery’s north and west walls, which were done first — making a stronger impression than those that were done later.

That said, “KNOT” remains a fascinating, if sometimes frustrating, attempt to weave Daou’s personal history into a larger matrix of art, language and politics. It’s worth a visit, even if you can’t unknot all of the show’s many artistic and intellectual threads.

“KNOT,” an installation by Annabel Daou runs through March 8 at Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery, 64 College St., Providence. Hours: Mon.-Fri. 11-4 and Sat.-Sun. 1-4. Phone: (401) 863-2932.

“Tangles and Snarls”

From “KNOT,” it’s on to “Tangles and Snarls.” (No kidding.)

The current exhibit at the Wheeler School’s Chazan Gallery features the work of photographer Jane Hesser and painter and mixed-media artist Kim Salerno. Though both artists share a fascination with organic shapes and processes — Salerno’s elegant cut-paper constructions, for example, suggest stylized sea creatures, while Hesser specializes in semi-abstract close-ups of hair, nests and roots and other naturally gnarly stuff — their artistic personalities couldn’t be more different.

Hesser, who teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design, focuses on what might be called nature’s hidden places: roots, seed pods, bird’s nests, even dust bunnies. At the same time, she’s not trying to document these materials in the manner of a naturalist or a botanical illustrator.

Her close-ups of plant roots, for example, are deliberately off-kilter, suggesting a kind of abstract calligraphy. Ditto a close-up of a bird’s nest that looks like an Abstract Expressionist drawing — Mother Nature does Franz Kline.

Salerno, teaches at the University of Rhode Island, has a more playful personality.

Her largest piece, White Sea, consists of a dozen or so cut-paper sculptures that dangle from the gallery’s ceiling like giant wind chimes. Each individual sculpture, meanwhile, is composed of smaller pieces of paper that have been cut in a dizzying variety of loops, pinwheels, ringlets and other shapes. Wandering through the installation feels a bit like swimming with a school of Cubist jellyfish.

“Tangles and Snarls,” works by Jane Hesser and Kim Salerno runs through Feb. 5 at the Chazan Gallery at Wheeler, Wheeler School, 228 Angell St., Providence. Hours: Tuies.-Sat. noon-5 and sun. 3-5. Contact: (401) 421-9230 or www.chazangallery.org.

bvansicl@projo.com