Project: In-between - dialogue. (working title) is an immersive exhibition project questioning the impact of childhood memories on the building of both individual and community identities. Each layer of the show will focus on one or multiple senses, offering access to the experience through multiple access points.
An individual’s identity is often treated as a stack of labels, stereotypical character traits, directly correlated to its community, that cannot be moved. The idea of an assigned identity, especially for marginalized groups, and its deconstruction appeared to be one of memory, of childhood: it’s a language created with our past-selves. For children of immigrants, immigrants and migrants, one’s image is responding to the way our countries of residency portray the community we belong to. Therefore, individuals are forced to navigate their histories with distorted images and ambiguous souvenirs of themselves, histories and homelands. This reflection on memories, markers of the construction of our identities, as individuals and communities, is the premise leading my project.
My inspiration comes from SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa), artists such as Zineb Sedira, Amel Benaoudia, Hedila Jimi. All exploring those themes through their unique practice, using mediums such as archives, film, photography, writing or sound. Their work translates universal, yet unique experiences, which is what intrigues my curiosity : the very individual experience varies within a group considered uniform from an outside viewpoint, yet is undeniably similar.
With an interdisciplinary approach and constructed as a laboratory for sensitive experiences, In Between : a dialogue will be offering a journey with multiple access points to both unique and universal reminiscences of childhood. This multiple-layer curation mode has several aims : creating an immersive environment requires thought around all the senses to be complete, as well as for accessibility concerns. Having several entry points ensures the accessibility of the experience : all differently-able bodies as well as different levels of knowledge and interest in arts are welcomed. This project aims to create a physical translation translating this gap, this dialogue “in between memories” allowing the audience to interact with others’ histories as well as their own.
All six artists would inhabit the space as a collective : each piece will complete or clash with one another. Amal Amer’s sculptural collages of her Lebanese’ family archives, objects from across the Middle-East and present photos in Los Angeles could be attached from ceiling to the floor, as to indicate the show’s paths, while the more classical oil painting, based off of memories Maxim’s offers a softer visual for visitors with warm tones and dreamy perspectives of Tunisia. In all corners, a seat and CD player with Joel’s Chima’s intimate conversation with his father, punctuated by archives from the South-Asian collection (British Library), in “I don’t think i ever, in fact, returned home”, will be made available for a 30mn sound break, perhaps, an invitation to think our relationships to our elders and ancestors. In the center, the food work will be displayed as a performance, one bringing by its smell, sounds and ritual-like actions, a sense of home to the gallery, in the spirit of the piece Doux et Âpre souvenir by Kader Attia. All of those artworks will work as an ensemble around a subtle yet soundscape reminiscent of youth diffused across the space, cradling viewers, allowing them to dive into their own memories, resembling Peter Adjaye’s work Ceremonies Within.
In-between - dialogue. (working title) can be described as a journey in the life of those who weren’t heard to those who reconstructed their identity on loss, ambiguity or absence of image. Ultimately, I wish to pinpoint both the similarities and differences (often rooted in race, gender and class disparities) between individuals, in and out their assumed community.
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