Dismemberment: Night in Mourning
Berlin, 2024
On September 12th, 2024 during open studios at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, I welcomed friends and colleagues into my Berlin studio to witness a rehearsal of a performance I am working on tentatively titled: Dismemberment: Night in Mourning. This work-in-progress explores the visceral experience of war and loss through song, drawing, performance, and poetry. Together with Kholoud Bidak, we sang a traditional lamentation song in Arabic, grounding the performance in an act of collective and communal grief. Our vocal expression on the stairs of the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien was followed by a reading I did of Sinan Antoon’s poetry in my studio, specifically his works on dismemberment, from his collection Postcards from the Underworld which capture the body’s fragmentation under the strain of violence. I also recreated a Yalda table—a traditional Persian symbol of light and renewal on the longest night of the year. The red on the table symbolizes life and hope, reflecting the act of reclaiming light in the darkest times. “And your tomb became a boat sailing on the flood/ocean of your mother’s hot tears.”
During the poetry reading I did a live visual performance using an overhead transparency projector. Projecting shadows of objects like keys and drawings about amputations, I created shifting images that interacted with the themes of dismemberment and memory. Antoon’s words speak poignantly to the fragmentation of the self under the trauma of war, with body parts scattering, yet retaining a haunting awareness. One poem, “Dismemberment,” particularly resonated, as it narrates the dispersal of the body’s components and the heart’s futile, lonely beat—until it is finally crushed. The work grapples with the emotional and physical wounds of war and reflects on the broader theme of reclaiming what has been severed, both literally and metaphorically.