AGO X RBC ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE:
NADA EL-OMARI & SONYA MWAMBU
+1-home, 2021, Tkaronto (Toronto), CA.
Calling cards always sat in a bowl at the entrance of our childhood homes, from Uganda to Egypt and Palestine, through various lands and onto Turtle Island. For separated families, calling cards were a way to witness a connection across generations and displacements, from here to wherever home is. With a global pandemic restructuring the world, communications have not only been a window into the past but have also woven a canvas of growing modes of future connections and new ways to share, speak, and recall places. +1-home is a digital platform on which our practices as experimental filmmakers amalgamate with a digital installation of non-linear space, time, and storytelling.
"We’ve often looked at landscapes and immortalized them into the designs you’ve neatly organized around our home. May they grow and change, and may each square become a reminder of where the needle is and where the thread is from.”
a touch of before, now and then. :
CURATED BY FRANCI DURAN & NADA EL-OMARI,
June 22-27 2023, CFMDC, Tkaronto (Toronto), CA.
“A touch of before, now and then.” is the moment when briefly you glimpse a smell, a touch, a sound and an image which all together remind you of the taste of a memory. Is it an empty place, a lonesome one? Is it a crowded gathering or an abandoned village? Or maybe it’s the dunes that have taken over a myth? Exhibited in dialogue, three works by artists Mivan Makia, Qiuli Wu and soJin Chun exchange with one another to the sound of a breeze, of a process, of a cleanse and a reviving.
Presented as CFMDC’s first installation, “A touch of before, now and then.” invites you to come, sit, breathe, and listen; at your own pace, on your own time and somewhere between all of us, between the diasporas, the here and the there, the knowing and not knowing, you can create your own sense of process and of the ways in which landscapes are traces.
Presented works:
Abandoned by soJin Chun
Red Tunnel by Qiuli Wu
Processing…Cleaning…Refreshing… by Mivan Makia
Curated by Franci Duran & Nada El-Omari
Installation ran between June 22nd and 27th (in person and online at cfmdc.tv).
Zine available here.
Images courtesy of Sarah Boo
IA 360º ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE:
NADA EL-OMARI & SONYA MWAMBU
+1-home, Apr 24 - May 11 2024, Tkaronto (Toronto), CA.
“Calling cards always sat in a bowl at the entrance of Nada El-Omari and Sonya Mwambu’s childhood homes, from Uganda to Egypt and Palestine, through various lands and onto Turtle Island. For separated families, calling cards were a way to witness a connection across generations and displacements, from here to wherever home is. Originally conceived at the start of a global pandemic as a website, +1-home now continues its life as a digital installation in a gallery, custom-made to InterAccess’s immersive projection environment as a two-player interactive experience.
There is a card that I carry in my wallet, it used to bend around the curves of a golden metallic bowl placed on the outer left corner of a square wooden table by the front door of our apartment. In it, nails, batteries, pens, keys, a small notebook, cigarettes, matches, coins, and a lighter would flop in and out, depending on who was home. Always, without fault, if you swept your small hand along the valley of the curved brass, your fingertips would hit a thin little card with a different design than the last one. Bodies shift, they grow, change, recover, hurt, and leave, but I’ve carried the calling card you had left at the bottom of that bowl for years. On my way out, when the bowl ended up in a box and you left it in a storage unit, I remember the moment I placed it in my wallet and I thought, do you think it’ll still work and I could call you? I have my own bowl now, and in it I lose all the things I would rummage through as a child.
Thank you, for being our archives, and showing us how to create our own. Here is our calling card. Talk to you soon.
Love,
Sonya & Nada.
+1-home was developed with the support of InterAccess’s inaugural IA 360º Artists-in-Residence program, with technical lead support by Terry Anastasiadis and Kyle Duffield.
+1-home was commissioned by and originally premiered at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2021
Developed with Unreal Engine.
Images courtesy of Maksym Chupov-Ryabtsev
Image courtesy of Vincent Drouin
P pour Palestine :
GROUP EXHIBIT: Bayan Abu Nahla, Amal Al Nakhal, Muhammad Nour ElKhairy,
Nada El-Omari, Yara El-Ghadban, Mona Hatoum, Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, Rehab Nazzal
September 24 - December 14 2024, Longueuil, Quebec, CA.
October 25 - December 14 2024 Quebec , Quebec, CA.
Curators : Ariane De Blois and Muhammad Nour ElKhairy
Plein sud, centre d’exposition en art actuel à Longueuil
P is for Palestine is a collective exhibition featuring conceptual, experimental, and poetic works by artists from within Palestine and the diaspora. Anchored in the belief that language is political, the exhibition delves into semantic and discursive issues specific to Palestinian reality, present and past. The selected works share a particular affinity with words—whether written, signed, or spoken—to evoke, narrate, or name various aspects of the Palestinian experience. What emerges are personal narratives that paint a picture of resistance and resilience against the multiple forms of colonial violence. In a context where Palestinian voices are often censored or struggle to be heard in both the media and the arts, the exhibition takes the form of an agora, a space for encounters that amplifies some of these voices and opens a space for Palestinian imaginaries.
P pour Palestine / P is for Palestine will also be presented from October 25 to December 15, 2024, at L’Œil de Poisson in Quebec City. The nature of the works gathered for the exhibition (video, print, and textual) allows for the simultaneous presentation of the project in two distinct locations in Quebec. This dual presentation reflects the shared desire of L’Œil de Poisson and Plein sud to increase the presence of artists from Palestine in the public space.
