Away from a state of things

What of proximity? Distance?
Of absent terrains? Architectures and people
How to go on about it?
I make an attempt
I write
Against a single narrator
I mean I’d define you
But then I ‘d risk losing you
I try not to put you in the center
nonrepresent
Is this a word?
It is in my language
I take Ndinda Kioko’s cue
I seek the language of my mother
... of music, of my dreams, and my memories
I re-contextualize
I move closer, and connect
She calls this space transitional
She says I am not there yet
But slowly becoming
I recline towards the loose
Beside me is a dry Nypheum
A river that once was
But I retain the logic of water
Something happened and I appreciate it
There’s a build up
But I’m not in control
I ride on chance

This exhibition is part of the second phase of our 2019 program at The Lab, bringing together artists and cultural practitioners from various backgrounds to look at the postcolonial context we inhabit through the metaphor of arrival and departure. Long shaped by forced diasporas and migratory flows, Amman will be approached as a living archive offering fertile ground for a conceptual and poetic archaeology of place.

Participating artists: Ahmad Salameh, Mohammad Hawwari, Vincent Chomaz, Asha Athman, Lizzy Vartanian Collier, Batool El Hennawy, Mona Ali, Jafar Jabi, Abdullah Sharw, Nadia Gohar, Yazan Setabouha and Dina Amro.

Vincent Chomaz's participation is kindly supported by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.

Image credit: Asha Athman, somalinimo: a remix.