CURATION AS RESISTANCE

Resistance takes on many forms. I see this exhibition and others like it as transcending aesthetic and art historical considerations. In my curatorial practice, I consider how to create frameworks for togetherness and to serve as a catalyst for community. This exhibition provides an opportunity to connect Arab American artists in diaspora, to create physical and tangible space where such space for many of us to come together has thus far existed primarily online. Curating is an act that can create moments in time and provide avenues for hope to flourish.

In / A thought is a memory, four artists, Zeinab Saab, Kiki Salem, Nailah Taman, and Zeina Zeitoun, address memory as part of their personal and community experiences, delving into past selves, memories, and ancestral ideologies. Though their work is not singularly focused on identity in a traditional and stereotypical sense, each artist navigates aspects of their identity through their practice, interweaving themes of duality, lineage, recollection, and fluidity as they draw upon individual and collective memory and their cultural hybridity as Arab Americans.

Memory is a fragile and subjective experience. What and how we remember is shaped by our varying perspectives, and our memories in turn shape and reshape our individual and collective identities. For diasporic communities, particularly those who identify as “Arab American,” the dynamics that contribute to the formation of identity are even more complicated, as our memories traverse multiple geographies, generations, homelands, languages, and traumas. How do we express this complexity with each other and to those around us? How can we resist narratives and constructs that tell monolithic stories, and who

are we intending to reach?

Through works that are diverse in medium, form, color, pattern, and symbolism, each artist in the exhibition navigates displacement as it relates to their unique experiences as Americans and as Arabs, with cultural “homelands” ranging from the Levant (Lebanon and Palestine) to North Africa (Egypt). They create new visual languages that revisit tradition and ritual, and sometimes seek to subvert it altogether. From Zeinab Saab’s brightly

BY NOEL MAGHATHE

colored dimensional works on paper to Kiki Salem’s animations of tile-inspired designs; from Nailah Taman’s sculptural use of ancestral and future-oriented unlanguages to Zeina Zeitoun’s nostalgic act of embedding collages with familial photos and keepsakes, the artists keep memory at the forefront of their creative practices, emphasizing the complex formulation of identity through the layering of experiences and forms of expression.

To me, A thought is a memory is more than an exhibition. It is an act of resistance against the marginalization of SWANA voices and cultures in mainstream art institutions, a celebration of Arab creatives, and an opportunity to connect over shared and disparate cultural experiences. Through the works of these four women and non-binary Arab American artists, we are reminded of the importance of discursive spaces and practices that address our heritages from nuanced, non-reductive, and often celebratory perspectives. This, in turn, allows artists in diaspora to come together, collaborate, and share their stories in ways that feel authentic for us. This exhibition represents a crucial step toward a diverse and proliferative Arab American futurity.

Noel Maghathe is a queer, mixed Palestinian-American performance artist and curator. They create and perform with queer functional tools to navigate the world, and their practice centers their Palestinian heritage. Through their work, they seek to educate audiences about the pain of occupation and their yearning for their country while also delving into deeper dimensions of personal identity beyond surface-level labels. Maghathe values connecting with other Palestinian and Arab artists in our homelands and in the diaspora. They hold a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where they were awarded the Stephen H. Wilder Traveling Scholarship in 2017. In 2022, they exhibited their work at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Pancake House Gallery, Maelstrom Collaborative Arts, and more. Maghathe was also selected as Curatorin-Residence at Wave Pool, where they curated Amid, an international Palestinian art exhibition. Currently based in Cincinnati, Ohio, Maghathe continues to create work in their studio.