Freewaves presented Somewhere Between Here and Now, an evening of video works and conversation curated by Suzy M. Halajian at the Hookah Lounge, as part of Los Angeles/Islam Arts Initiative, a first-of-its-kind city-wide initiative on Islamic Art. One of the concluding events of the LA/IAI series, Somewhere Between Here and Now offered a situation cultivated for deep viewing and dialogue of artists’ videos exploring complex layered histories and locations far from Los Angeles, but seen daily through the news and media sources. Simple views of distant societies mask the multi-faceted, significant, and profound. History builds layers and angles on the famous corniches, common roadways, café lives, and nighttime paths. Raconteurs come out and tell their confidential stories, whether true or false.
Artists included Basma Alsharif, Marwa Arsanios, Marwan Hamdan, Joe Namy, Christine Rebet, and anthropologist and filmmaker Joanne Nucho.
“The program brings together works that highlight a narrator’s engagement with the actual telling of a story, suggesting that the narratives we create do not only circulate through the act of telling, but through the individuals, objects, and relics that inhabit our personal surroundings. By merging seemingly disconnected experiences and appropriating multiple accounts through a playful engagement with storytelling devices, the artists teeter the space between candor and artifice, offering subjective and varied relationships to the stories and objects that define us. They impress the notion that the past can be used to question what lies ahead. More pointedly, that we can get closer to understanding the present through re-staging and reinterpreting past events.”
—Suzy M. Halajian, curator
Freewaves is currently deepening and reorganizing our archive of 35 years of public art in Los Angeles. Check back in 2025 to explore more of our history.
