Western Front: 'Can You Make a Pet of Him Like a Bird or Put Him on a Leash For Your Girls?' is a three month exhibition by Rana Hamadeh (DAI alumna & currently tutor), accompanied by a performance on Thursday, May 21st @ 7pm
May 15 – Aug 2, 2015
Visual and performance artist Rana Hamadeh develops long-term research projects that think through systems of justice, militarism, histories of sanitation, and theatre. Hamadeh’s exhibition will present two complementary sketches of her new opera-under-development, manifesting as both a live performance and a gallery exhibition. Expanding on her recent eight-channel sound play, Can You Pull in an Actor with a Fishhook or Tie Down His Tongue With a Rope? (2014), the work takes the Shi’ite ceremony of Ashura as its main material. Decoding, then re-ordering and re-choreographing the ceremony’s theatrical components, Hamadeh uses histories of power in Syria and Lebanon as a starting point to examine militant theatre, military institutions and capital. The gallery exhibition will serve as a proposal for the future opera’s scenography, extracting textual elements from the play and re-casting them as a theatre set without actors.
This project is made possible with the generous financial support of the Mondriaan Fund.