Downtown, Los Angeles
Group Exhibition
We Dance, We Smoke, We Kiss
FahrenheitSophia Al Maria, Meriem Bennani, Phil Collins, GCC, Kareem Lotfy, Tala Madani, Jumana Manna, Slavs & Tatars, Téléramadan Curated by Myriam Ben Salah This is a tale of a slicked wedding singer from the Gaza Strip who won Arab Idol. This is a tale of joy blooming from a loosely defined region where nuances are overlooked and histories are simplified through the lenses of failure, conflict, and narrow aesthetic formulas. This is a tale of strangers in strange lands, of non-native wanderers with attitude, of individuals who navigate the chasms between cultures and don’t care anymore about what Edward Said said. « I’m telling you, if you don’t come now and bring Viagra for your father, I’ll go shame us all. » [1] This is a tale of male thugs and of father tongues, of alternative imagination, of alchemical reactions, and of human intimacies. This is a tale of dark humor and light spirit, of grooming of bodies and cars and carpets, of bifurcated gender relations, and of a “Global” South / “Middle” East / “non” West burdened with symbols and placed within the vacuums of loaded cardinal points. This is a tale of the familiar and the foreign, and of the unapologetically vernacular. Un-a-po-lo-ge-tic. This is a tale of sensuality. This is a tale of cracking into the sidelines and cracking jokes. This is the tale of Scheherazade in One Thousand and One Night : a failure to amuse means kaput. --- 1 - Jumana Manna, Blessed, Blessed, Oblivion, 2010. This exhibition is made possible by generous support from the Institut Français