When Solidarity Is Not a Metaphor

Adelita Husni-Bey,  Encounters on Pain 2016 - 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.

 When Solidarity Is Not a Metaphor exhibition opens in Venice, propelled by a daring programme of participatory convenings and performances

Created by Alserkal Initiatives in partnership with Cité internationale des arts and in collaboration with Lightbox, When Solidarity Is Not a Metaphor opens today and runs until 21 April 2024 at My Art Guides Venice Meeting Point, Navy Officers’ Club, Arsenale, Venice. 

Curated by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Arts and Culture Programme Manager at Cité internationale des arts, the exhibition and its integrated programme challenge the understanding of ‘solidarity’ as merely an object of theorising and discourse. When Solidarity Is Not a Metaphor features thirteen artists and eleven programme contributors from more than a dozen countries including Sudan, Palestine, Myanmar, Ukraine, Guadeloupe, and Cameroon.

When Solidarity Is Not a Metaphor is driven by a programme of direct, non-mediated participatory experiences, unrehearsed ‘heart-to-heart’ conversations between practitioners, and site-specific performances.

Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman, from New York and Paris by way of Rwanda, respectively, have created Charging Station, a public space in which direct messages are shared in-person, as a communal initiation to resistance. Charging Station ignites debate every day from 18 to 20 April, beginning at 15.00. 

Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, whose work as DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Research) unpacks how politics are channelled through pedagogy and the built environment, propose direct conviviality and sociability in Join For Coffee: We Need to Talk. In this intervention, taking place every morning from16 to 18 April (09.00 to 11.00) on the ‘fondamente’ in front of the Navy Officers’ Club, the artists invite passers-by to share their coffee ritual and talk about Palestine.  

Dima Srouji, Revolutionary Enclosures Until the Apricots (2023), image courtesy of the artist

Paula Valero Comin, Manifestation Végétale and Resistant Herbarium Rosa Luxemburg, 2022. image courtesy of the artist

Museum of Breath collaborator Olivier Marboeuf, La Mémoire des hauts-fonds. Image courtesy of the artist 

Care threads throughout the exhibition and the programme, notably in Adelita Husni-Bey’s work Encounters On Pain which is both installation and intervention. On 16, 18 and 19 April (10.00 to 12.00), the artist will receive individual guests in a therapy chamber in the Club, to discuss their experiences with emotional and physical injury, mapping out pain points on medical paper. 

Archival research intersects with electronic music in Maya al-Khaldi and Sarouna’s Other World, an album produced by the all-women-led Tawleef. The artist duo have unpicked the Palestinian archive of musical heritage from the Popular Art Centre in Ramallah, folding the traditional melodies, instrumentation, and lyrics into contemporary soundscapes. Al-Khaldi’s haunting vocals and Sarouna’s innovative qanun harmonies chart unexplored musical territories. The artists perform on 17 April at 16.00 in the garden of the Navy Officers’ Club. 
 
Cameroonian artist and choreographer Zora Snake presents L’Opéra du villageois, an acerbic performance on the great debate surrounding the restitution of objects. A theatre piece re-imagined for the space around the Navy Officers’ Club, L’Opéra—rich in effects like the flag and tomb of the European Union and a gold-and-salt ritual—critiques the historical plunder of resources and the silent, enforced submission of colonised peoples. L’Opéra will be performed on 17 April at 14.00

Heart-to heart-conversations offer a genuine, unscripted exchange on what deeply matters to artists at a given moment. These quick, unmoderated often visceral sessions emanate from a space in which artists can listen and respond, building an engaging and reciprocal dynamic. The first conversation, on 17 April at 15.00, features Elena Sorokina and Magdi Masaraa, members of the Paris-based Initiative for Practices and Visions of Radical Care, speaking to artist Saad Eltinay.

Later, on 19 April at 17.00, artist Rehaf Al Batniji is in conversation with Bani Khoshnoudi.                   
Commenting on the curation of the programme and exhibition, curator Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Arts and Culture Programme Manager at Cité internationale des arts, remarked: “I conceive of exhibitions as spaces where the ‘distribution of sensible’ takes place. According to Jacques Rancière, any distribution of sensible in a given public or private space sets the divisions between what is visible and invisible, sayable and unsayable, audible and inaudible. Thus, this exhibition intends to be a sensible political constellation of positions that form visual, performative, discursive, and aural alliances in a kind of interdependence.”

Vilma Jurkute, Executive Director of Alserkal Initiatives, said: “When Solidarity is Not a Metaphor is a collective attempt grounded in the cognitive generosity of our partner institutions and a global civic network of multi-disciplinary practitioners. In light of the ongoing injustices in Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine, and other parts of the world, it feels imperative for us at Alserkal to embody the spirit of lived practice and extend our platform to the Venice Biennial. By working with artists whose practices are embedded in the ethics of care, we hope to encourage whole-thinking structures and shared moments of intention to emerge.”

The exhibition runs from 16 to 21 April 2024, and will be open from 09.00 to 20.00 daily. 

 
Featured artists include Majd Abdel Hamid, Yana Bachynska, Rehaf Al Batniji, Saad Eltinay, D Harding, Adelita Husni-Bey, Nge Lay, Museum of Breath, Koushna Navabi, Shada Safadi, Dima Srouji and Jasbir Puar, and Paula Valero Comín. Programme contributions by DAAR - Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, Initiative for Practices and Visions of Radical Care (Bani Khoshnoudi, Magdi Masaraa, Elena Sorokina), Maya Al-Khaldi and Sarouna, R22 Tout-Monde, Zora Snake, Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman.