Kiki Salem, FOLLOW THE LEAD(ER), 2022; Digital Animation (Still).
Opening Reception: الفكرة ذكرى / A thought is a memory
Zeinab Saab, Kiki Salem, Nailah Taman, Zeina Zeitoun
Curator: Noel Maghathe
Mentor: Sara Raza
Please join us for the opening reception for لفكرة ذكرى / A thought is a memory, a group exhibition that presents the work of four artists: Zeinab Saab, Kiki Salem, Nailah Taman, and Zeina Zeitoun. The exhibition is curated by Noel Maghathe (winner of CUE’s 2023 open call for curatorial projects), with mentorship from Sara Raza.
RSVPs are requested but not required. The opening reception is free and all are welcome.
Read more about the exhibition here, and see below to RSVP.
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 theirher 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 installation artist. Maghathe creates and performs with queer functional tools to navigate the world. Their practice focuses on their Palestinian heritage and the occupation of Palestine, their love and pride for their country, and sharing the pain of occupation and their longing for their country to educate their audience.
Maghathe holds a BFA in photography with a minor in sculpture from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 2017, where they were awarded the Stephen H. Wilder Traveling Scholarship, a grant awarded to two graduating seniors each year. With this award, Maghathe traveled to Palestine to perform with other queer artists, including Rawand Aqel in the streets of the old city of Birzeit and Shukri Lawrence from Trashy Clothing in Jerusalem. Maghathe is featured in EMERGENCY INDEX: An Annual Document of Performance Practice, Vol 9. They currently create work in their studio based in Cincinnati, and co-instigate unique art experiences at PIQUE art experience and bed-and-breakfast with Lindsey Whittle, Annie Brown, and Clint Bassinger.
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.