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| You're only half an hour away: Maissa Alameddine & Katie Shammas |
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Maissa Alameddine, A lullaby for a rising, 2024, still from video |
Maissa Alameddine grew up in Lebanon, now lives and works on the unceded lands of the Cammeraygal and Dharug peoples. She is an interdisciplinary artist and vocalist, working across photography, video, installation, sound design and live performance. Maissa’s work explores the idea of migration as a chronic injury. Her work is personal, exploring inheritance and transference of heritage in the complexity of the diasporic experiences. Her work centres on storytelling and community, working through intersectional and intergenerational approaches that challenge normative discourses and prioritise self-determined processes in the contemporary art world. Maissa is co-founder and creative producer of Arab Theatre Studio, an arts collective initiated out of Dharug Land. @maissa
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| Maissa Alameddine, Song For Sitti- Song for my Grandmother, video and textile installation, The Blake Prize 2024 |
Katie Shammas is from Galilee Palestine, now living on Dharug Country in north-west Sydney. She is a member of Sweatshop Literacy Movement and Arab Theatre Studio. Her writing has been published in Meanjin, Povo, Kindling and Sage and Red Room Poetry. She has performed work for Cement Fondu: Better Nature; Word Travels: Chasing Home, and RedRoom Poetry: Speak Australian. She is the mother of two daughters and works in the environmental sector. @kootie75
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Katie Shammas reading The song that fills the valley, POVO, Sweatshop, Better Read than Dead, Newtown 2023 |
"... During our residency at Gunyah we plan to collaborate deeply, creating art that navigates memory, resistance, and connection in a space of healing and possibility. Amid grief from witnessing ongoing genocide on our homelands, we seek rest and reflection, and time together to lay the foundations of a long-time project we have been wanting to develop. Our process of collaborating at Gunyah will honour our shared heritage and respond to the tension between urgent creativity and grief. By reflecting on and researching ancestral journeys between Haifa and Tripoli, we plan to harness the stories of our elders who travelled these routes. Then we will infuse these narratives with art and music. ..."
You can find out more about You're only half and hour away: Maissa Alameddine & Katie Shammas on Instagram @maissa and @kootie75.
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Katie Shammas, Knowledge of Land, Kindling and Sage, November 2023 |
