My Name is Palestine

Southern Exposure, in collaboration with The Palestinian Museum (Birzeit) and Arab.AMP (Oakland) is proud to present My Name is Palestine: Echoes from The Palestinian Museum’s Music Online Exhibition أنا إسمي شعب فلسطين “Ana Ismi Shab Falastin.” Debuting at Southern Exposure, this exhibition of sound and image sources materials from The Palestinian Museum’s archives to create a wholly new and immersive experience of Palestinian life, anchored in musicality. The show is co-curated by Ahmad Alaqra and Leyya Mona Tawil, in collaboration with video artist Mohammad Tatour. It will be on view May 2–30, with an Opening Reception on Saturday May 2, a Closing Reception on May 30, and three separate guided Listening Sessions throughout the exhibition’s duration. The My Name is Palestine ( أنا إسمي شعب فلسطين ) collection was researched and developed by Ahmad Alaqra and The Palestinian Museum (Birzeit) over a period of years, accumulating a vast archive of historical materials alongside methodologies and broader documentations. For Southern Exposure’s iteration of My Name is Palestine, Alaqra and Leyya Mona Tawil collaborated with video artist Mohammad Tatour to source material from The Palestinian Museum’s archive to compose a never-before-seen installation specifically for our Bay Area community. This sound and video work examines the role of music as a cultural and political force within the Palestinian context, with a particular focus on its evolution alongside the liberation movement. The 20-minute installation brings audiences through the dualities of Palestinian life: weddings and funerals, processions and prisons, mobilization and solidarity, and massacre and birth. Music is situated as both witness and participant in a continuum of resistance, where the act of creation becomes inseparable from the pursuit of justice.  Music and song have been integral to Palestine's cultural fabric for centuries, evolving through dynamic exchanges with civilisations that have traversed this land. Palestinians sing in a wide range of circumstances, from joy to sorrow, in the fields and in prisons, about harvests, olives, and hunger, about rain and drought, about weddings and funerals, about exile and return, about refugee camps and homes, thus transforming singing into a collective practice and a language that reflects the very fabric of society as it moves between private and public spaces.  The opening reception will feature a performance by Spite of Darkness, Detroit-based quartet led by Palestinian-American composer Mike Khoury. Listening sessions on three Thursday evenings will feature Bay Area musicians and writers responding to the collection. For the closing of the exhibition on May 30, SoEx partners with Arab.AMP in presenting SPARKS #3 - LABOR; conversation and performances by NAKA Dance Theatre and Wael Buhaissy of Al Juthoor Dabke Troupe.