Featuring work by artists Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Marwa Arsanios, Ali Cherri,
Muhammad Shawky Hassan, Ali Kays, Mosireen, Raed Rafei & Rania Rafei, Jayce Salloum, Sanaz Sohrabi
Making Revolution: Collective Histories, Desired Futures
November 11-December 11, 2021
Montréal Arts Interculturels (MAI)
3680, rue Jeanne-Mance, suite 103
Curated by GEM Lab members Farah Atoui and Vivane Saglier
Making Revolution: Collective Histories, Desired Futures explores formal expressions of revolution in the Arab world and Iran in video art. While the 2011 Arab uprisings are often considered a turning point in the region’s political history, this exhibition proposes a different timeline. The works featured here engage with longer histories of revolutions since the 1950s and their enduring legacies. Questioning the linearity and the determinism of news reports and political discourses, Making Revolution favors the returns to, and resurgences of, shared histories. The works subvert official archival material, re-orient found footage or recordings, surgically deconstruct photographs, and generate avatars that reconstruct fragmented bodies. Often, humor propels incisive critiques. Always, these works reflect on how the meanings of revolution are constructed through the production and circulation of images and discourses. The act of manufacturing political images crafts new temporalities of struggle where revolution is at once challenged and inevitable.
Read more about the exhibition at MAI's website.
A roundtable with speakers Nayrouz Abu-Hatoum, Sundus Abdul Hadi, Razan AlSalah, and Ariane Lorrain will take place Friday, November 19 at 5pm. You can register for the roundtable, moderated by Farah and Viviane, on Facebook.
You can also register for guided tours of the exhibition. The only remaining tickets are in French and Arabic.