Unknowness is the Way*

Image: A preliminary sketch by artist-in-residence Pilar Elgueta, 2024. Courtesy the artist.

As we bring our summer residency season to a close, we invite you to join us for an afternoon to meet nine of our current residents and UK Associates, and gain an insight into their creative practices.

This drop-in event offers the chance to meet our current residents and experience new, existing, and in-development works presented across the Delfina house by Daniah Alsaleh, Han Mengyun, Kvet Nguyen, Madhushree Kamak, Mohammad Al Faraj, Pilar Elgueta, Peyman Shafieezadeh, Shenece Oretha, and Tara Al Dughaither.

Presentations

Daniah Alsaleh (Project Space)
All afternoon
In the Lens of the Beholder is Daniah’s current research in progress on mobile cameras’ influence on public and private performances, focusing on how the presence of these devices alters behaviour during street performances, concerts, and private gatherings. Drawing on Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical approach, Daniah investigates the tension between authentic self-expression and the discomfort of feeling observed. Her research reflects on how the constant possibility of being recorded shapes social interactions and affects the vibrancy of public life.

Han Mengyun (Project Space)
Following the recent premiere of her video installation Night Sutra at the Busan Biennale 2024, Mengyun presents a non-narrative video and textile installation exploring themes of intersectionality and coexistence. The work integrates still and moving images, text, and fabric, featuring footage of classical dance filmed in Cambodia, nature imagery that inspired the choreography, and poems written by Mengyun, narrated by her daughter. The installation is adorned with cloth scrolls printed with Indian woodblock patterns.

Kvet Nguyen (Project Space)
All afternoon
Kvet explores the ways voiceless objects, people, and things can speak to us through archives and testimonials. She focuses on archives that reveal missing parts of our stories, potentially bringing forgotten voices to life for the first time or in new ways. A central element in her exploration is the babettas, famous motorcycles made in Czechoslovakia during the state-socialist regime. These motorcycles became a popular item for Vietnamese guest workers in the 1970s and 1980s, often sent to Vietnam disassembled and reassembled upon arrival. Kvet examines what these shapes and objects represent today.

Mohammad Al Faraj
All afternoon
“I will try to open up a poem and let you inside it, as if it exploded and you are walking between its pieces”. Mohammad’s multimedia installation, Hands of Yakut, is a collage of materials, words, and images resisting and rebelling against its own form. Branches with cardboard palms grow from the solid ground, dancing in the air. Newspapers drape the wall with palm trees in the colour of blood rubies or the red of the sun burning, announcing a season where the days are bright.

Pilar Elgueta (Project Space)
All afternoon
Pilar will display a new site-specific version of Bodies of Water: prologue as a video and sound installation, accompanied by views of her current research project, The Preservation of the Unpreservable Society. This multimedia presentation opens a conversation on the human condition from a post-anthropological perspective, exploring themes of resistance, futility, impermanence, and care.

Shenece Oretha (Dining Room)
All afternoon
A tribute to all the moving stories, words and offerings shared during her time at Delfina, Shenece shares the progression of her forthcoming moving speakers works. Her offering for open studios celebrates the voices, people and moments that have moved her, through portrayals of voicing animated by air and an invitation to share in sound choreographing action.

Tara Al Dughaiter (Library)
All afternoon
Tara will present her evolving project Boundaries of the Dreaming Body, exploring themes of rebirth, repair, and regeneration through rituals and meditations. Rooted in the artist’s maternal connection to the myths, dances, and songs of Southern Iraq’s ancient rites of spring, these processes traverse ancestral boundaries and timelines. Tara reflects on questions such as, “Where is home?”, “Which story is mine?”, and “What seeds to grow and which to let go?”, inviting reflections on transgenerational triumph and trauma. Visitors are drawn into this multilayered, postcolonial journey of healing and transformation through interactive engagement—reading, dancing, voicing, and listening.

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These summer season residencies were made possible by our residency partners and supporters, including ARTUS Chile, The Brooks International Fellowship Programme, Tate, Saudi Visual Arts Commission, and Delfina Foundation’s regional patron networks for Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

* Event title taken from Han Mengyun’s three-channel video, Night Sutra (2024).

These summer season residencies were made possible by our residency partners and supporters, including ARTUS Chile, The Brooks International Fellowship Programme, Tate, Saudi Visual Arts Commission, and Delfina Foundation’s regional patron networks for Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean.