Through a series of discussions and workshops at the Lab encompassing architecture, personal archives and food, we will consider what happens when we migrate to or from a place. How do we assert our memories, traditions and cultures within a new geography? What constitutes ownership of space? How are ties with the “homeland” made or maintained? Do we consider the notion of “home” literally, through the construction of physical dwellings? Or is it a more elusive construction? Can we speak of a “poetic dwelling”? A memory, taste or ritual?

This workshop 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.

Lizzy Vartanian Collier is a writer and curator based in London, specializing in contemporary art from the Middle East and North Africa. Her work has been published by Canvas, Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, Hyperallergic, After Nyne, the Guardian, Ibraaz, Jdeed, EVN Report, Tribe and Suitcase, along with many other publications. Her recent exhibition ‘Perpetual Movement’, took place during Arab Women Artists Now (AWAN) Festival 2018, and later travelled to the debut Armenia Art Fair. Lizzy is also the founder of the Gallery Girl.