May 28, 2024
Artist Talk with Qusay Awad and Victoria Langmann (KdK) at the opening of UNLOCK, an installation by Qusay Awad
6:00 p.m. Curators’ Tour with the Cultures of Curatorial program at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB Leipzig)
7:00 p.m. Artist Talk with Qusay Awad
July 18, 2024
Intimate Coffee Reading – Interactive live performance Installation by Ossama Shalgheen/Em 3youn
This interactive live performance, curated by Ammar Hatem, took place on July 18, 2024, and was inspired by a social custom practiced primarily by women in the Southwest Asian region for over 500 years.
Ossama Shalgin (Asim) embodies the character Em 3youn, who interprets the traces left by coffee grounds at the bottom of cups, transforming them into short stories that listeners connect to their personal lives. The performance centers on the creation of spontaneous stories from the patterns formed in coffee cups, diverging from the Western notion of this practice as a form of sorcery or fortune-telling. Instead, the persona employs a specific method to analyze the images in the coffee cups, using a numerical pattern observed in storytelling traditions across various cultures and civilizations, particularly in the Southwest Asian region.
Through this performance, the persona seeks to redefine the practice, moving away from the portrayal in Western European media as prophecy, magic, or supernatural foretelling. Instead, the character emphasizes the role of the coffee reader as an improvisational storyteller, highlighting the art’s cultural and narrative significance rather than framing it as mystical or magical.
October 2024
Dresden stories of migration
October City Walks by Fatema Khabour, part of the initiative Dresdner Migrationsgeschichten: Miteinander reden. Perspektive wechseln (Dresden Migration Stories: Talking with Each Other. Changing Perspective), integrate the exhibition into the fabric of the city’s civic life.
In walking through the city and following Fatema’s personal journey, participants engage with themes of migration, memory, identity, and infrastructure in a tangible and experiential way. The city walks, initiated by Elena Grimbs, are part of an outreach program aimed at fostering long-term collaborations between the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD) and community organizations beyond the duration of the exhibition.
Nov 3, 2024
Common Unity in Displacement Workshop by Qusay Awad at the finissage
As part of Under One Sky – Of Patterns and Other Beings, an exhibition intervention that, starting in the Damascus Room, explores implicit patterns and their applications, a community-building workshop took place on November 2, 2024. Led by Qusay Awad and co-curated by Victoria Langmann and Ulrike Riebel, the workshop aimed to integrate a community-building element into the permanent exhibition “Dialogue among Guests – The Damascus Room in Dresden invites” at the Japanese Palais, fostering connections among like-minded individuals and cultivating a sense of community.
The workshop focused on sharing ideas about the challenges of geographic and cultural displacement and exploring ways to overcome them. Valuable stories and insights from the artist’s personal biography were shared along with experiences with collectives and collaborative work.