Artist in Focus: Nour Ouayda: Programme 1
Every Morning (في كلّ صباح); Fly, Fly, Sadness (Vole, vole tristesse); Towards the Sun (نحو الشمس); Neither Saint nor Santa Maria (Sin Dios ni Santa María), The Birth of a Flower; ouarda ouarda: yet another flower film; The Secret Garden (الحديقة السريّة : قصة من ثمانية فصول)
Screenings:
Conceived in collaboration with Nour Ouayda, this selection of shorts weaves together recent films by the Lebanese artist with historical and contemporary works by others that resonate with her practice in thematic and/or methodological ways. The core of the programme is found in Ouayda’s 2023 film The Secret Garden, which plays with science-fiction tropes to evoke a political allegory of transformation, renewal, and estrangement by pairing images of existing flora in Beirut with a voiceover fable of the city’s mysterious rewilding.
The programme expands outwards to consider speculative approaches to political actuality and the picturing of plant life, challenging anthropocentric approaches and pointing to the rich possibilities of docufiction. Breaking with the monographic format, this programme offers an opportunity to engage deeply with a single artist’s work, while also putting her practice in dialogue with the work of others, including Haitian-Canadian filmmaker Miryam Charles, Spanish duo Samuel M. Delgado and Helena Girón, and French-Canadian artist Samy Benammar.
Curated by Erika Balsom
The programme expands outwards to consider speculative approaches to political actuality and the picturing of plant life, challenging anthropocentric approaches and pointing to the rich possibilities of docufiction. Breaking with the monographic format, this programme offers an opportunity to engage deeply with a single artist’s work, while also putting her practice in dialogue with the work of others, including Haitian-Canadian filmmaker Miryam Charles, Spanish duo Samuel M. Delgado and Helena Girón, and French-Canadian artist Samy Benammar.
Curated by Erika Balsom