This exhibition brings together Arab artists who hold space for grief. Expressing sorrow, individually or collectively, is neither to surrender nor to accept defeat. Instead, it is to denounce the cruelty of indifference and the futility of denying pain. It is to affirm the right to mark profound loss – of human lives, homelands, intimacy, language, and ancestral practices – among other tribulations that this region, shaped by recurring tragedies, continues to endure.
In Arabic, there is no clear definition of grief. The word ḥuzn is construed as the opposite of happiness or joy, but ḥazn, the same word with altered diacritics, describes rugged terrains, and can designate Arab lands more specifically. These homonyms imply deep entanglements between grief and this geography, which reverberate throughout its poetic traditions. One of the key genres of Arabic poetry, al-ritha’ [elegy], historically opened with a form of lamentation, most famously the motif of al-wuquf ‘ala al-aṭlal [stopping by ruins], often employed as a prelude to other subjects. Rather than seeking closure, reconciling with harrowing absences can similarly be an overture, opening windows into a complex reality occluded by survival mechanisms.
The artworks in this exhibition are poetic marginalia scribbled around a gaping void – the losses that can never be recovered. Representations prove elusive, like grief itself, which feels like an insidious apparition, both ineffable and intrusive, relentlessly haunting those unable to grasp or escape it. The artists pay tribute to that liminal condition of irresolvable ambivalence and perpetual agony, sharing reflections defiantly suspended within a restless space of elegiac whispers.* Against this disorienting alienation, to insist on remembering is to counter erasure, to resist the conditions that wrought grief in the first place.
--
*The title of the multifaceted project Elegiac Whispers, under which this exhibition falls, is borrowed from Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab’s 1963 poem Manzil al-Aqnan [The House of Serfs].
*The exhibition features the artists: Hussein Nassereddine, Hussein Shikha, Ismaïl Bahri, Joe Namy with Maya Al Khaldi, Kholoud Hammad, Morjan Ghanayem, Nadim Choufi, Ola Hassanain, Osama Hussain, Rachid Koraïchi, Raisan Hameed, Rawan Murad, Reem Masri, Sadiq Al-Harasi, Sara Kontar, Shereen Abedalkareem Hasanin, Sohail Salem, Tarik Kiswanson, Thana Faroq, Vera Tamari.
Curated by Amin Alsaden
--
Special thanks to those who made this exhibition possible: Yasmin Huleileh, curatorial assistance; Abed Alrahman Shabaneh, programming oversight; Naji El Mir, graphic design; Haifa Abualnadi, translation; iPrint, printing and production; Marah Farhat, Diaa Jubeh, and Mohammad Balawneh, production and installation.
Press & inquiries: Media@qattanfoundation.org