الفكرة ذكرى / A thought is a memory
Zeinab Saab, Kiki Salem, Nailah Taman, and Zeina Zeitoun
Curator: Noel Maghathe
Mentor: Sara Raza
Exhibition Dates: March 23 – May 13, 2023

Opening Reception
Thursday, March 23rd, 6–8 pm

Closing Program
Organized by Kamelya Omayma Youssef; presented in partnership with the New York Arab Festival
Saturday, May 13th, 1–5 pm

الفكرة ذكرى / A thought is a memory is a group exhibition curated by Noel Maghathe that brings together works by four artists: Zeinab Saab, Kiki Salem, Nailah Taman, and Zeina Zeitoun. These artists, who all have lineages that trace to the so-called Arab world, draw upon their varied backgrounds in ways that both celebrate and subvert inherited identities. Through sculpture, photography, collage, animation, and painting, they embrace playful ways of making that are highly personal, often collective, and that position fluidity and rootedness as complementary rather than opposing forces in the building of selfhood, community, and culture.

Memories often serve as the source material for our personal and shared histories. The late philosopher and artist Etel Adnan, in her 2016 collection of prose and poetry, Night, wrote: “Is memory produced by us, or is it us? Our identity is very likely whatever our memory decides to retain. But let’s not presume that memory is a storage room. It’s not a tool for being able to think; it’s thinking, before thinking.”

A thought is a memory asks us to consider: what happens when memories are disrupted by displacement, migration, and political upheaval? What does it mean to be both grounded by and freed from the stories of our ancestors? Through explorations of geometry, color, light, and material, the four artists in the exhibition present works that reimagine their hybridity as Arab Americans. 

Zeinab Saab’s paintings indulge in experimentations with color, opening up portals to aspects of their young self which may have been lost while navigating constructs of gender, patriarchy, and tradition. Kiki Salem’s digital animations evoke patterns from textiles designed by her/their ancestors in Palestine and motifs from the architecture they inhabited, using new technologies to reconfigure material traditions. Nailah Taman’s sculptural works visualize symbols from Etel Adnan’s The Arab Apocalypse, attempting to connect to an otherworldly “un-language” and access its shared knowledge. Taman’s textile piece transforms an unfinished tablecloth embroidered by their taeta (grandmother) into a shelter, threading together practices of their elders with discarded materials that encapsulate a queerness they weren’t able to share. Zeina Zeitoun uses collage and film to piece together images from her visits to Lebanon, grasping for fragments of seemingly ephemeral memories and re-organizing them to construct moments she can savor beyond time.

The works presented in A thought is a memory weave together ephemeral and kaleidoscopic stories. These four artists layer experiences that are simultaneously personal, familial, communal, and political, and that are often eschewed in mainstream discourse about place—or viewed through a lens that ascribes fixed narratives to mutable notions of identity and community. Through their work, they proudly claim new spaces, rituals, and language that transcend boundaries of time and geography. “If I didn’t remember that I am, I won’t be,” wrote Etel Adnan. “Reason and memory move together.”

About the Artists
Nailah Taman (b. 1993. Minnesota) is a nonbinary Egyptian American multidisciplinary artist + abolitionist organizer based in Minneapolis, MN. They graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2015 with a BA in Visual Arts, and are a member of PF Community Studios in Minneapolis. Their work explores energetic accumulation, tactility and texture, and mental illness and language, often emerging in sculptural forms. They are an avid collector of objects deemed precious by their own criteria. Find them on Instagram at @everything_coming_up_roses.

Zeina Zeitoun (b. Arlington, Virginia) is a New York City based artist, photographer, and photo editor born in America and raised in between the US and Lebanon. She was born to two Lebanese immigrants, and is the youngest of three strong and courageous daughters. During her formative years, Zeina realized that her passion for visual arts could be combined with her natural need for activism and education. She now creates personal bodies of work across multiple mediums that document familial and self discovery. These bodies of work hail from the many complicated corners of being a Lebanese-American woman living in the US. Her creative storytelling has recently morphed itself into collaging, using an ever-growing archive of home photos, videos, songs, poems, collected artifacts, objects hoarded throughout the years, and more.

Kiki Salem (b. 1995, Al-Bireh, Palestine) is a St. Louis-based multidisciplinary Artist, Designer, Writer, Educator, Lover, Learner, and overall bad bitch. Through various mediums, with textiles at the focus, her practice covers topics of escapism, occidental assimilation, orientalism, experimental visual pattern development, linguistic hybridization, and the Palestinian question. Kiki is a member of the Screwed Arts Collective in St. Louis. Her wearable collection, Punk Ass Arab (@punk_ass_arab) can be found on Instagram.

Zeinab Saab (b. Dearborn, Michigan) is currently based in Portland, Oregon. Their current work focuses on exploration of the inner child through color theory and the grid. They received their BFA in Printmaking from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, OH in 2015, and completed their MFA in Printmaking at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL in 2019. Their work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in San Francisco, St. Louis, Detroit, New York, California, Dubai, New Mexico, and Hawaii among other places, and is held in several permanent collections, including Emory University, The Bainbridge Museum of Art, Zayed University in Dubai, UAE, the Arab American National Museum, and the University of Iowa’s Special Collections Library.

About the Curator
Noel Maghathe is a queer, mixed Palestinian-American performance artist and curator. They create and perform with queer functional tools to navigate the world, and their practice centers on their Palestinian heritage. Through their work, Maghathe seeks to educate audiences about the pain of occupation and their yearning for their country while also delving into the deeper dimensions of personal identity beyond surface-level labels. Maghathe values connecting with other Palestinian and Arab artists in our homelands and in the diaspora.

Maghathe holds a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where they were awarded the Stephen H. Wilder Traveling Scholarship in 2017. In 2022, they exhibited their work at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Pancake House Gallery, Maelstrom Collaborative Arts, and more. Maghathe was also selected as Curator-in-Residence at Wave Pool, where they curated Amid, an international Palestinian art exhibition. Currently based in Cincinnati, Ohio, Maghathe continues to create work in their studio.

About the Mentor
Sara Raza is an award-winning curator and writer specializing in global art and visual cultures from a post-colonial, post-Soviet perspective. She is the author of Punk Orientalism: The Art of Rebellion (Black Dog Press, London 2022). Raza has curated for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Mathaf: Modern Arab Art Museum (Doha, Qatar), and the 55th Venice Biennale, among others. Formerly, she was the Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator for the Middle East and North Africa at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Curator of Public Programs at Tate Modern, London. Sara holds a BA and an MA, both from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and pursued studies towards her PhD at the Royal College of Art, London. She lives and works in New York City, where she teaches MA courses at the New York University and the School of Visual Arts.

Exhibition Materials

Press Release
Click here to download a PDF version of the exhibition press release. For more info or press materials, email press@cueartfoundation.org.

Catalogue
الفكرة ذكرى / A thought is a memory is accompanied by a color catalogue with texts by exhibition curator Noel Maghathe; mentor Sara Raza; artists Zeinab Saab, Kiki Salem, Nailah Taman, and Zeina Zeitoun; and writer Sarah Aziza (mentored by Dina Ramadan). The catalogue is available to read below, and a print version is available free of charge to gallery visitors.

Sarah Aziza’s long-form essay, “The Time Is Now: Speculative Memory, Reclaimed Futures,” is also available to read on our website.

Press Coverage

Sahar Khraibani, “للفكرة ذكرى / A thought is a memory,” The Brooklyn Rail, May 5, 2023

Mousse Magazine, “الفكرة ذكرى / A thought is a memory’ at CUE Art Foundation, New York,” April 27, 2023

Naima Morelli, “Exhibition in New York celebrates and subverts Arab American identities,” Middle Eastern Monitor, April 27, 2023

Rebecca Anne Proctor, “New York exhibition sees Arab-American artists explore the effects of displacement…” Arab News, April 18, 2023

Artwork Images

Installation Images

Opening Reception Photos

Closing Program Photos

Exhibition Credits and Support

الفكرة ذكرى / A thought is a memory, curated by Noel Maghathe and mentored by Sara Raza with works by Zeinab Saab, Kiki Salem, Nailah Taman, and Zeina Zeitoun. Catalogue essay by Sarah Aziza, mentored by Dina Ramadan. Graphic design by Daleen Saah. Presented by CUE Art Foundation, 2023.

This exhibition was organized as part of CUE’s annual open call for curatorial projects. Noel Maghathe was awarded the opportunity to curate an exhibition at CUE’s gallery space through the open call. Stay tuned for more information about our 2024 open call, which will be released in late Spring 2023.

Food for the opening reception has been generously donated by Edy’s Grocer, a Lebanese market located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Programmatic support for CUE Art Foundation is provided by Evercore, Inc; ING Group; The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; The William Talbott Hillman Foundation; and Corina Larkin & Nigel Dawn. Programs are also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; and the National Endowment for the Arts.