Mona Hatoum is one of my art heroes. I’m very inspired by her. The thematics that I was reading in the piece also very much spoke to me. 

I am Essma Imady, installation artist here in the Twin Cities. I grew up in Damascus, Syria, and was dislocated here in 2011. I’m a child of two cultures. My mother’s American. My father’s Syrian. But I grew up in Damascus, and I didn’t come here until I was 24. 

I had many privileges in that I could speak the language, but speaking the language is not the same as speaking the culture, and I was very excited to see Mona Hatoum. A lot of the material she uses in Exodus II are materials that I’m very interested in. Hair and travel material and objects that are both, helping us, the viewer, find ourselves in our body and that embody us. Also, taking objects outside of what we expect in order to look at them with new eyes.

I found myself really thinking about the title of the show. I was thinking a lot about home and that word and what it means, especially artists of Arab heritage who work with objects that reference the body, I always think of home. Because I feel, for me, my experience with home has been finding it within myself. 

I have found myself often grappling with foreignness. So when I was in Syria, my mother is American, so I was the foreigner. And then 24 years later, I came here, and I was a Syrian. So the question of home and where it, to find in order to locate it, has always for me come back to the body.

And her use of hair as the direct reference to the body there, and almost ethereal connection between these two suitcases coming together with this just slight entanglement that’s like signaling the connection also very deeply spoke to me. 

I’m also very interested in the medium of hair. For a lot of viewers, there’s something extremely like grotesque. Or it’s a, a part of us that’s very connected to desire and also very stereotyped bodily part for a woman of Arab heritage. Thinking of it as this, in this new context of being this ethereal thing, this last about-to-break connection between perhaps two people set off on a path of migration.

I am Essma Imady, installation artist here in the Twin Cities, and I grew up in Damascus, Syria, and was dislocated here in 2011. 

I was very interested in Hayv Kahraman’s piece. You can’t help but connect more to pieces that the artist has certain common experiences with you, and to almost feel like you have a special “in” to the piece. For example, you speak the language. And the title is in that language. It’s called Bab el Sheikh. So Sheikh can be either older man or religious leader. And I looked up that area in, uh, Iraq and it is, seemed to have been named after this religious leader, Zhilani. 

And it’s this beautiful, ethereal piece of this floor plan, and then these like almost ghostly women touching this floor plan. And in thinking about a lot of the gender politics from where I come from in Syria, some of the similarities between there and Iraq, and thinking of this beautiful piece shown in the context of this exhibition that almost frames the reason home won’t let you stay as being weighted by issues of gender.

And thinking of naming a painting area of this male known leader, and yet having it be a painting of woman and having these women be ethereal, and so that their presence feels not fully there. And having this floor plan that’s very solid and of our very material world. You can’t get more literal when you’re talking about home than a house plan, right? And then having it combined with this, with the ghosts almost of these women.

I am very interested in artwork that mobilizes a few symbols that are unaccessible to everyone who comes to the piece. And what this art piece is saying to who. I thought that that simple gesture of naming this room plan after a very masculine figure and having it, again, named after a geographical space that was named after a man, and yet having it be not about that was very powerful. And that small fact isn’t accessible perhaps to everyone who just comes to the piece also felt relevant and part of the conversation she was having about perhaps questions about why home won’t let us stay sometimes.