3-8 Apr 2025 | Coalitions of Belonging

You are among family, and you can be at ease.”
What a beautiful way the Arabic language welcomes a friend into your home—or a stranger into your store.

Growing up estranged from my mother tongue, getting to know it has been a slow, winding journey—a constant counter-mapping. From rote, automatic phrases to soft, intentional wishes. I often wonder: why does Arabic cling so tightly to tenderness and hospitality, even as many other languages grow dull in everyday use? Can it truly exist without the feeling of bare feet on incense-infused carpet?

Ahlan wa sahlan to each of you entering this exhibition—curated in the spirit of this welcoming phrase.
May this be a place of softness and solace for you.

Everything you see here is the result of many hands, warm meals, thunderous solidarity, and long, meandering conversations. Hands stitching stories with questions: Where are we? Where do we want to go? These are not just maps. They are expressions of collective imagination—woven by coalitions of people who came together to listen, to share, and to weave their stories into one another’s.

Coalitions of Belonging is a call to intimacy in how we come to know. Together, we crafted (counter)cartographies in tapestry form.
The Arabic word إنتماء (intimā') means belonging—and at its root is intimacy.
The word for coalition—ائتلاف (i'tilāf)—comes from the same root as family.
To eat, to sit, to sew together: these are the acts through which we form intimate families. And through the process of map-making, we cultivate deeper senses of belonging—ways of knowing and expressing that are alive, embodied, and rooted.

We trace the patterns of severance in our life systems—and in response, we draw on the patterns of our life-affirming Indigenous histories and living traditions. We practice our collective imagination with the precision of a sword-dancer—the fluid, deliberate motion of the blade.

I invite you to engage with this exhibition through a series of exercises guided by a booklet you’ll find inside. These exercises are designed to help you explore the orientations, processes, and stories embedded in each counter-map—and to begin creating your own.

Please take a piece of canvas and a pen from the table at the entrance. Share a booklet between two, three, or four of you. Remove your shoes at the end of the hallway and move through the space however you feel called to.

And may the scent of traditionally harvested labdanum resin from Crete accompany you—with sweetness.