© Rihab Essayh, 2022.
Roundtable Discussion: Art & S.W.A.N.A. Diasporas
February 18th, 12h00 PM will be accessible on our page.
Vitrine installation : February 18th to 20th at articule. Extended : February 24th at 2h30PM
articule is pleased to announce it’s second Special Project of the season! This conversation will be pre-recorded and broadcast on our platforms starting February 18th! You will also be able to see the work of the invited artists in articule's showcase from February 18th to 20th!
Chantal Khoury invites Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich, Manel Benchabane, Hoda Adra, and Rihab Essayh to discuss their differences rather than similarities. This conversation among artists, peers, and friends, all tied to Tiohtià:ke - Mooniyang - Montreal, stems from Khoury’s ongoing desire to engage with SWANA communities while breaking hierarchies of knowledge.
The roundtable is in conjunction with Khoury’s exhibition, Carrying lace and soil | Emporter tissu et terre, that runs until February 26th at McClure Gallery. In her work, she considers pertinent theoretical ideas around displacement and experience while questioning popular terminology in contemporary painting.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich: Artist & Community Organizer
Manel Benchabane : Curator & Artist
Hoda Adra: Poet, Artist
Rihab Essayh: Artist & Cultural Worker
Moderator, Chantal Khoury: Artist & Educator
You can find the transcript of the conversation here :
Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich is currently living and working in the unceded indigenous lands of Tiohtià:ke / Montreal, QC, Canada, of the Kanien'kehà:ka Peoples. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts, with honors, from Concordia University and is presently pursuing her Masters in Fine Arts at Concordia University. In recent years, her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions, including the Printemps du Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, AucArt in the UK, Rad Hourani Gallery, McBride Contemporain Gallery and the Montreal Arts Interculturels. Her work has been published in the feminist journal Yiara as well as the Documenta Journal in New York. Her works are present in private collections in Montreal, New York, Los Angeles, Prague, Barcelona and Milan. She also serves as a board member at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts and is part of the BIPOC Fabulous Committee at articule artist-run center in Montreal, Quebec.
Website | Instagram
Manel Benchabane lives and works in Tiohtià:ke / Montreal. She studied visual arts and art history at Concordia University. She has been curating exhibitions at the Stewart Hall Art Gallery for several years. She has curated the exhibitions Futurs imaginés (2016), Field Recordings (2017), Trames (2019), Matière, masse et poussière (2020) and La mouvance des sons (2021). She is interested in issues of nature and environment, diversity and cultural issues, heritage and feminism. She also has an artistic practice in drawing, a medium she particularly likes for its direct and sensitive aspect.
Instagram
Spoken word poet, visual artist, and literary translator, Hoda Adra was born in Lebanon, grew up in Saudi Arabia until age 17 before being adopted by Tiohtià:ke/Montreal in 2002. This territorial triangle inspired her first spoken word album La liberté des sens (2017), a rhythmic story of an Arab female body pitched from one world to another. Her writing explores gender apartheid, aborted oral history, and the politics of marginalization in relation to female locomotion. In 2020, she co-authored the theatre piece Habibi’s Angels: Commission Impossible, presented online by La Chapelle. Hoda paints and works in film; she is completing an artist residency in experimental cinema with Main Film. In 2021, she was awarded the PEN Translates prize for her translation from spoken Arabic to English of Palestinian oral histories of the Nakba for the book Voices of the Nakba (Pluto Press).
Website | Instagram | Vimeo
Rihab Essayh is a Canadian-Moroccan interdisciplinary artist whose large-scale, immersive installations create spaces of slowing down and softening. Her research considers issues of isolation and disconnection in the digital age, imagining futurities of soft-strength and social reconnection by proposing a heightened attunement to colour, costume, tactility and sound. She is currently doing her MFA from the University of Guelph and holds a BFA with Distinction from Concordia University.
Website | Instagram
Chantal Khoury is a Canadian artist of Lebanese descent, born on the unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik and Mi’kmaq First Nations/New Brunswick. In her work, she acknowledges the gap in Lebanon’s recorded history and the impulse to offset cultural withdrawal. She approaches meaning and methodology by threading historiography with techniques of erasure in the studio. Khoury was based in Tiohtia:ke/Montreal for thirteen years and currently lives in Tkaronto/Toronto. She holds an MFA from the University of Guelph and a BFA with Distinction from Concordia University.
Website | Instagram
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