Upcoming Artists-in-Residence: You're only half and hour away, Maissa Alameddine & Katie Shammas

You're only half and hour away: Maissa Alameddine & Katie Shammas

You're only half an hour away, is a collaboration of multidisciplinary artist and vocalist, Maissa Alameddine, and writer Katie Shammas. They are artists from Lebanon & Palestine, who have worked together for on many interdisciplinary projects. Their collaborative practice evokes ancestral stories, exploring connections to the sea between their ancestral cities. In collaboration, their work intertwines poetry, storytelling, music and visual arts.

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 a multidisciplinary 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. She uses her voice as a provocation and a response. Maissa inherited her voice from a long line of women vocalists, she uses voice as a provocation and a response. Her work is personal, exploring inheritance and transference of heritage in the complexity of the diasporic experiences of displacement and living between cultures. @maissa

Maissa Alameddine, Song For Sitti- Song for my Grandmother,
video and textile installation, The Blake Prize 2024

Katie Shammas is a Palestinian Australian living on the lands of the Dharug people in north-west Sydney. She studied English Literature and Environmental Science and now works in the environment and sustainability sector. Katie is a member of Sweatshop Literacy Movement and is on the board of Arab Theatre Studio. She is the mother of two daughters and her work has been published in Meanjin, Povo, Kindling and Sage and Red Room Poetry. @kootie75

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. ..."

Katie Shammas, Knowledge of Land, Kindling and Sage, November 2023

You can find out more about You're only half and hour away: Maissa Alameddine & Katie Shammas on Instagram @maissa and @kootie75.