is a series of observations with Tala and others, an immersion that allows her to understand what it means to exist on foreign soil
Tala
I grew up in Beirut, a city where the ambition of a developing country is paralleled with the exponential growth of political instability, a region where the whole map is being redrafted by the upheavals of our neighboring countries. I grew up in a landscape that was constantly changing, witnessing the erosion of discourses, of memories, and of space. The effects of this ongoing state of conflict gave birth to an art of resistance. A Beirut that struggles, reflects, rethinks, and recreates an art that resonates with the flux of the political and social turmoil inside of all of us. This is when art for me became more than a tool of self-expression but rather a crucial agent of change that deals directly with the infrastructure of our lives. The complexities of art as a form of resistance, expression and activism drove me all-the-while I was surrounded with artists that sprung out of a generation of war, loss of memory and trauma. In 2020, after the Beirut blast I moved to New York and started my journey as an immigrant. This traumatic experience allowed me to unlock new parts of myself and opened an ongoing conversation about what that means. These conversations happen in my art; I take sketches of day-to-day accounts about how I navigate and exist on a foreign soil, what triggers me and what are the bits and pieces I find comfort in. These notes became the language I’m rebuilding home with.
Visible Inc.
Visible Inc. is a documentation of my personal experience of the “otherness” for the first time. When I was living in Venice, I met a wide range of immigrants, travelers, nomads, tourists.. I started exploring the spaces around me through their eyes and fell in love with the endless versions of the urban fabric for each person. That’s when I started Investigating dwelling in an age of displacement. This project attempts to map the stages of domesticating a land while trying to set up systems of invisibility to earn the right to dwell. My study records numerous manifestations of dwellers who use their spaces and movements as a reaction to their surroundings. Abandoning all conventional methods of data collection and deciding instead to be part of this process sparked a series of conversations and observations with street dwellers, this immersion allowed me to follow many narratives in which the discourse transforms spaces into reactionary mechanisms against the system; creating new environments that allows one’s existence.