Poster design: Studio Mnjnk
The Mosaic Rooms is pleased to announce In the shade of the sun, a group exhibition contemplating the relationship between politics and aesthetics by an exciting new generation of Palestinian artists. The exhibition comprises new multimedia installations by artists Mona Benyamin, Xaytun Ennasr and Dina Mimi as well as a new sonic performance commission by Makimakkuk.
Working across mediums that include film, installation, music and gaming, In the shade of the sun brings together artists that are forging a new language to think about and with Palestine. Their individual practices intertwined through making works for future times within the crisis of the present, in soft expressions and radical politics, from the absurd to the poetic.
Independent researcher and curator Adam HajYahia has been specially invited by Bilna’es to contribute a text to the exhibition and will be co-curating the exhibition’s accompanying public programme.
This group of artists is brought together by Bilna’es (in the negative), an adisciplinary platform that seeks to find new models for artists to redistribute resources and support one another in the production and circulation of work. Functioning as an interdisciplinary publishing space with releases ranging from music to video games Bilna’es was initiated by Ruanne Abou-Rahme & Basel Abbas, Muqata’a, and other anonymous figures as a way to support artistic communities in Palestine and beyond. The exhibition is curated by The Mosaic Rooms in conversation with Bilnae’s.
This exhibition forms part of The Mosaic Rooms 2023 programme, which seeks to interrogate questions of active solidarity; to consider how we can continue to collaborate, host, and create sustainable support networks that enable critical and creative artistic practices.
In the shade of the sun
Mona Benyamin, Xaytun Ennasr, Makimakkuk, Dina Mimi
6/09/23—14/01/24
The Mosaic Rooms is pleased to announce In the shade of the sun, a group exhibition contemplating the relationship between politics and aesthetics by an exciting new generation of Palestinian artists. The exhibition comprises new multimedia installations by artists Mona Benyamin, Xaytun Ennasr and Dina Mimi as well as a new sonic performance commission by Makimakkuk.
Working across mediums that include film, installation, music and gaming, In the shade of the sun brings together artists that are forging a new language to think about and with Palestine. Their individual practices intertwined through making works for future times within the crisis of the present, in soft expressions and radical politics, from the absurd to the poetic.
Independent researcher and curator Adam HajYahia has been specially invited by Bilna’es to contribute a text to the exhibition and will be co-curating the exhibition’s accompanying public programme.
This group of artists is brought together by Bilna’es (in the negative), an adisciplinary platform that seeks to find new models for artists to redistribute resources and support one another in the production and circulation of work. Functioning as an interdisciplinary publishing space with releases ranging from music to video games Bilna’es was initiated by Ruanne Abou-Rahme & Basel Abbas, Muqata’a, and other anonymous figures as a way to support artistic communities in Palestine and beyond. The exhibition is curated by The Mosaic Rooms in conversation with Bilnae’s.
This exhibition forms part of The Mosaic Rooms 2023 programme, which seeks to interrogate questions of active solidarity; to consider how we can continue to collaborate, host, and create sustainable support networks that enable critical and creative artistic practices.
Dina Mimi (@___sa3lok), The melancholy of this useless afternoon
Dina Mimi’s project The melancholy of this useless afternoon unfolds through two chapters reflecting on the role of the fugitive and the smuggler. Chapter I layers images of birdsong competitions, revolutionary songs from Oman, Yemen and Palestine with a narrative contemplating movement, loss, separation, and revolutionary practice. Chapter II employs a clandestine style to document the practice of bird smuggling and the part the human body plays in this act. These are accompanied by a framed vest with an organic material resembling what the birds are traditionally hidden within.
Dina Mimi (1994, Palestine), is a visual artist who lives and works in Jerusalem. Her practice is multifaceted and uses video, sound, performance, and text. Dina has been researching issues and subjects regarding the body and death in the public sphere, and notions of visibility and invisibility in the relation of archaeology to the object, and the museum to death. She has also been researching protest as a performance. Her work examines the role of the body-force in public space in Palestine.
Dina Mimi’s project The melancholy of this useless afternoon unfolds through two chapters reflecting on the role of the fugitive and the smuggler. Chapter I layers images of birdsong competitions, revolutionary songs from Oman, Yemen and Palestine with a narrative contemplating movement, loss, separation, and revolutionary practice. Chapter II employs a clandestine style to document the practice of bird smuggling and the part the human body plays in this act. These are accompanied by a framed vest with an organic material resembling what the birds are traditionally hidden within.
Dina Mimi (1994, Palestine), is a visual artist who lives and works in Jerusalem. Her practice is multifaceted and uses video, sound, performance, and text. Dina has been researching issues and subjects regarding the body and death in the public sphere, and notions of visibility and invisibility in the relation of archaeology to the object, and the museum to death. She has also been researching protest as a performance. Her work examines the role of the body-force in public space in Palestine.
In their multimedia installation, Revolution is a forest that the colonist can’t burn, Xaytun Ennasr celebrates trees as symbols of resistance and devotion. Through the artist’s aesthetic of radical softness, the installation examines what a revolutionary relationship with nature looks like. Trees are situated not as resources waiting to be extracted but as beings that are loved and that love back. That relationship is presented through a variety of media, including drawings, poetry, ceramics, textiles, living olive and fig trees, and an interactive digital game.
Xaytun Ennasr’s work as a multidisciplinary artist is centered around the liberation of Palestine, radical softness, and revolutionary cultural production. They use a variety of mediums including videogames, drawings, ceramics, installation, and text to start a conversation around a world that transcends beyond the oppressive capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchal reality of the one we currently occupy.
Xaytun Ennasr’s work as a multidisciplinary artist is centered around the liberation of Palestine, radical softness, and revolutionary cultural production. They use a variety of mediums including videogames, drawings, ceramics, installation, and text to start a conversation around a world that transcends beyond the oppressive capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchal reality of the one we currently occupy.
Mona Benyamin, Tomorrow, Again
Tomorrow, Again, by Mona Benyamin stages a dysfunctional news broadcast that consists of different segments which recreate and react to various prominent daily catastrophes from Palestine. Instead of a spoken narrative, the film resorts to exaggerated emotional and physical displays. It utilises fragmented and often conflicting testimonies, doppelgängers, and a surrealist visual language to draw on notions of truth and fiction, and differing temporalities. The cast of the film sees two protagonists, the artist’s parents, assume multiple identities as they narrate and consume their own stories in an endless cycle.
Tomorrow, Again, by Mona Benyamin stages a dysfunctional news broadcast that consists of different segments which recreate and react to various prominent daily catastrophes from Palestine. Instead of a spoken narrative, the film resorts to exaggerated emotional and physical displays. It utilises fragmented and often conflicting testimonies, doppelgängers, and a surrealist visual language to draw on notions of truth and fiction, and differing temporalities. The cast of the film sees two protagonists, the artist’s parents, assume multiple identities as they narrate and consume their own stories in an endless cycle.
Makimakkuk (@makimakkuk), What remains in the museum
Sonic Live Performance (Date TBA)
Makimakkuk will debut a newly commissioned sound work titled What remains in the museum. This multi-layered work sonically reflects on identity, colonisation, love and relationships. It will be performed singularly live in the exhibition during a special event, the date will be announced shortly.
Sonic Live Performance (Date TBA)
Makimakkuk will debut a newly commissioned sound work titled What remains in the museum. This multi-layered work sonically reflects on identity, colonisation, love and relationships. It will be performed singularly live in the exhibition during a special event, the date will be announced shortly.
Adam HajYahia (@kimikku) has been specially invited by Bilna’es to co-curate the exhibition’s accompanying public programme.
HajYahia is an independent researcher, curator, and culture producer. He isfrom Haifa, Palestine. Adam’s research interests revolve around structural an is hierarchical violence, and its intersections with capitalist, colonial, sexual, and social dynamics in Palestine and beyond.