Artsadmin partnered with Arts Canteen to co-curate the ASWAT Commissions for the AWAN Festival 2024. ASWAT (meaning ‘voices’ in Arabic) is a platform spotlighting emerging artists with a practice within performance art who identify as Arab Women.
Five artists were selected for the commission, funded by the Cockayne Foundation. The commission included a three-day residency at Toynbee Studios, £1,500 artist fee, producer support from both Artsadmin and Arts Canteen, and the opportunity to showcase work at AWAN festival on Saturday 30 March at Rich Mix, London.
The five artists chosen by Artsadmin and Arts Canteen were:
- Alia Hamaoui
- Bint Mbareh
- Jessica El Mal
- Riwa Saab
- Tasneim Zyada
South London-based visual artist Alia Hamaoui (she/her) is a British-Lebanese artist, organiser, founding member of Collective Ending and a member of gobyfish collective (a platform for collaboration and exchange operating at the intersection of art and food). She is currently studying a part-time MFA at Goldsmiths. Recent shows with gobyfish include ‘Collective Laboratory’, MUDAM, Luxembourg. Recent solo exhibitions include: HINO 500, San Mei Gallery, July 2023 London, UK and Passing Pari-daiza, Soup Gallery, May 2023, London, UK. Recent group shows include: In the green escape of my palace, Studio Chapple, November 2022, London, UK and But Not Blue (organiser), Collective Ending, September 2022, London, UK.
Maintaining a broad, multidisciplinary practice, Hamaoui aims to advance our understanding of the interrelationship between the object and place, as viewed from within our increasingly digitised society and tech-infused existence. Hamaoui addresses the importance placed on specific physical remnants of the past in shaping cultural identity, in the context of Lebanese or broader SWANA histories. She re-examines them through a contemporary mass media and popular culture lens, in order to explore the ways in which the ancient image continues to distort a sense of place. Recent works also resuscitate lost histories to explore potentials for new myth making. Working across sculpture, installation and video, layered and textured mise-en-scènes sample references to ancient artefacts, heterotopic spaces and contemporary cultural anecdotes to offer uncanny scenes, that situates between object, image and space.
Instagram: @aliahamaoui
Bint Mbareh works with all formats of sound (radio, live, installation and many others) and is driven by the superpowers of communal singing human and more than human. She conducted research initially to combat the myth of water scarcity pushed by Israeli settler colonialism. the songs that she learned helped communities summon rain, and at their core helped people build a relationship with their environment, decide what time of year it is, communally determine how to share resources, mainly the resource of time, fairly. Bint Mbareh makes music and sound today because she believes these uses can still be evoked, rather than remembered.
Instagram @bintmbareh
www.bintmbareh.net
Jessica El Mal is a British Moroccan artist and curator working on themes of ecologies, modern mythologies and ‘community’. She is curator at The Arab British Centre, founder of A.MAL Projects (an art and research initiative between North Africa and Europe) and is a PhD candidate at Leeds University.
Instagram: @jessica_elmal
@a.mal_projects
Riwa Saab is a cross-disciplinary artist who works with space, sound, and words. Through braiding together the crafts of theatre, poetry, and music, her work often interrogates how art puts people and our relationships at the centre of the political narratives we inhabit, while particularly exploring the diasporic experience of building cultural bridges, unpacking generational and familial baggage, and creating space for pockets of joy.
Instagram: @riwa_sb
Website: https://riwa.myportfolio.com/home
Tasneim Zyada is a London-based writer and published poet. With her roots stemming from Haifa, Palestine 1948, she documents the generational stories that rise to the surface within her own. Described as a calm storm, Tasneim’s work touches on memories, mental health, relationships and faith.
Twitter/X, Instagram and Tiktok: @tasneimzyada
| Date | Title | Venue | City |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 March 2024 | ASWAT Commissions | Rich Mix, London |