Black Memory Red Sea | السواد ذكرى البحر الأحمر | nouf saleh

(Black Memory Red Sea), contends with secrecy, kinship, displacement, separation, and memory in Afro-Arab communities, specifically of the Yemeni Muwalladeen. For me this body of work is an act of soft resistance to erasure of Afro-Arab communities. Most of my recent works have the family archive as a starting point, so I am using the personal to explore these bigger social and geographic patterns, memories and history.

Secrecy is a big part of Arab, Yemeni, and Mixed cultures in general. This is not a value judgment, through my work I learned its importance to survival. In my art, I work with this limitation, thinking creatively about how to depict my family, subjects, and myself in ways that honor our privacy and our truths simultaneously. This impacts my choices around the form and mediums I end up using to present the work.

In this show, I am restaging previous works together in the same room.  The works have been shown before separately on their own over the last few years. I am thinking about the conversation and relationships that have emerged between these works in space. I have slowly researched and worked on each artwork for the last five years. These works have helped me reflect and process my lineage, family, purpose and who I am. I am eager to share this body of work, fully, in one place to allow the narrative to be clearly articulated and depicted. In some ways, this work feels like a family portrait across time-space. Therefore, it is also history that I feel responsible to document and share.

About the Artist:
i was born in sana'a and raised in the diaspora.  and currently living in occupied Wahpekute land also known as Minneapolis. i am an interdisciplinary artist and through my practice, i speculate about and research collective memory, language, migrations, time, familial relations, absence and change. i work with many materials but primarily with alternative photographic processes, wood work and neon.

GALLERY HOURS through Nov 30
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*Closed Thursday, November 28 

Image: Black Memory Red Sea, nouf saleh