How to Time Travel

15 January - 15 February, 2024

How to Time Travel presented a series of commissioned and selected works that explore themes of estrangement and displacement and propose ways in which the dimension of time conditions re-orientation and belonging.

The participating artists, hailing from various trajectories and working across multiple disciplines and mediums, were invited to propose works that act as homing devices, defined as vehicles, instruments, rituals, or tools for navigation and orientation.

Within this framework, a new notion of home emerged — one that transcends the physical and spatial realm confined by national borders, and is instead understood as a vast terrain composed of lived experiences, encompassing all affinities and connections, sensations and sentiments, objects and emotions, as well as recollections and visions. Implicit in this definition is an introspection about the elements that tether us to the world and to one another.

In this sense, acts of approaching home — contemplating, seeking, finding, understanding, remembering, and imagining it — often encompass a non-linear movement through time that does not solely rely on nostalgia but also invites speculative visions for the future.

While the resulting works manifested as tangible objects — a reconstructed or deconstructed painting, a deck of cards, or a book — their journeys involved an interplay between fact and fiction; the protagonist of their time-bending narratives often being an imagined or reconstructed archetypal figure such as an olive tree, a distant sound, a father’s painting, or a grandmother's prayers and stories.

The works are thus derived from a layering of real and made-up worlds where historical facts are altered, embellished, or intentionally omitted, and where lived experiences are narrated and re-narrated, manipulated, or made-up altogether.

Participating Artists: Bady Dalloul, Hescham Alkarshan, Mazen Kerbaj, Noor Bseiso, Nour Bishouty, Raafat Majzoub, Shireen Mufti, and Tamara Kalo.

Curation: Rana Beiruti
Production: Hajar Quta, Ranwa Abughoush
Special thanks to the Rights for Time Network, Taghyeer, and the We Love Reading Organization

Bady Dalloul is a French-Syrian multimedia artist whose work interlaces historical events with personal truths and fiction. His pieces are imbued with sociological and historical reflections on his own heritage, particularly focusing on the global issue of migration. Through drawing, video, and physical objects, Bady engages in a dialogue between the imagined and the real, reflects on territorial demarcations, and challenges West-centred historiography and knowledge production.

Mazen Kerbaj is a Lebanese comics author, visual artist, and musician. His visual art is heavily influenced by his musical improvisation practice. He authored more than 15 books that were translated into several languages and his drawings, videos, and live performances have been shown around the world. Mazen Kerbaj is widely considered as one of the initiators and key players of the Lebanese free improvisation and experimental music scene. As a trumpet player, he pushes the boundaries of the instrument beyond recognition.

Nour Bishouty is an interdisciplinary artist working across various media including video, sculpture, works on paper, digital images, and writing. Her work engages with histories and narratives of place and poses questions around dissonance, opacity, legibility, and the generative possibilities of misunderstanding.

Raafat Majzoub is an architect, artist, writer, and cultural strategist. His work focuses on fiction, speculation, and collaborative learning. He is the director of The Khan: The Arab Association for Prototyping Cultural Practices where he explores a collective artisanship of truth, and builds an alternative Arab world for himself and his friends.

Shireen Mufti is a full-time fine artist and art teacher. She specialises in intricate and detailed oil painting, creating pieces inspired by everyday life and local imagery.

Tamara Kalo is a Lebanese-French interdisciplinary artist formally trained in architecture. She incorporates light and time-based media such as photography, video, sculpture, and performance to investigate narratives that shape home, displacement, and identity.

She examines the spaces between dichotomies, such as public and private, and comfort and discomfort, using embodied knowledge and research to reframe internal and external landscapes through fragmentation and repetition. By juxtaposing familiar materials and objects, she seeks to represent the fragility of what lies between a moment in time and place and its memory in both her personal and the collective subconscious.

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