Nour Shantout
Searching for the New Dress | 24.06-15.07.2022
Searching for the New Dress is a research-based project that looks at Palestinian embroidery in Shatila, a Palestinian camp in Lebanon. It explores how embroidery is influenced by the migration of Syrian Palestinian and Syrian women who took refuge there after the war in Syria. To create ‘New Dresses’ that reflect the socio-political, economic and demographic changes in the embroiderer's life in the aftermath of the Syrian revolution, Shantout learned to design new motifs and types of stitches which are usually associated with Syrian and Palestinian embroidery. The research also involves interviews with embroiderers in various embroidery centers in Shatila, identifying designs that reflect the changes in Palestinian embroidery. The project asks, what if a ‘New Dress’ emerges after the Syrian revolution, the destruction of the Yarmouk camp – the capital of the Palestinian diaspora –, and the displacement of thousands of Syrians? What would it look like? Which fabric, colors, threads and techniques would be used? Which political slogans and maps would it have?
Vernissage: Friday, 24.06, 17:00-20:00
Stroboskop Art Space
ul. Siewierska 6, accessible via ul. Dorotowska
How war shapes culture: Nour Shantout + Yulia Krivich on art-making, activism, and advocacy
Artist talk and panel discussion
Monday 27.06, 18:00-20:00
Austrian Cultural Forum
Próżna 7/9
Curated + Moderated by Katie Zazenski
We will begin with a presentation by both artists who will introduce their current projects; Shantout will detail the research and history of Searching for the New Dress, which is currently being shown at Stroboskop Art Space. Krivich will focus on her work with the community cultural center Solidarny Dom Kultury “Słonecznik”, which was established as an emergency support initiative in March 2022 in response to the escalation of the Russian war on Ukraine.
We will follow the presentations with a panel moderated by Warsaw-based curator and cultural worker Katie Zazenski, which will be centered on how identity, culture, displacement, and diaspora are both created and shaped by modern wars, as well as the role of advocacy, community, and the archive in contemporary art making in East/Central Europe, through the practices of Shantout and Krivich.
NOUR SHANTOUT is an artist and researcher. She was born in Damascus, Syria in 1991, and has been based in Vienna since 2015. She started studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Damascus in 2009 and continued her work abroad. In 2014 she received her bachelor of visual arts from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts as well as the Helen EL Khal prize. She then pursued her studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She got her diploma of fine arts at the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien (Textual Sculpture, Prof. Heimo Zobernig) in 2020. She is currently pursuing her PhD studies in Philosophy at the same Academy. In 2021, her research-based project Searching for the New Dress received the Production Award; Culture Resource, as well as The Visual Arts grant; The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (Beirut). She has presented her work in the lecture series ‘Art and Protest’ at Yale's Beinecke Library and at the Palestine Museum US.
Nour Shantout works around subjugated heritage, counter-memory, counter-history, labour and alienation, from a post-colonial feminist perspective.
YULIA KRIVICH (Ukraine/Poland) - visual artist, curator in Za*Grupa and activist, working with photography and public space. Graduated from the Department of Architecture of the State Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture (2010) in Dnipro and from the Faculty of Media Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (2013). She was one of the recipients of the Gaude Polonia Scholarship Program of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of Poland (2016), participant of the Pla(t)form at the Fotomuseum in Winterthur, Switzerland (2018) and nominated for the Pinchuk Art Center Prize for young artists in Ukraine (2018); recipient of the Solidarity Grant of Krytyka Polityczna (2020) as part of curatorial trio ZA*grupa; recipient of the Scholarship Program of Warsaw City in 2021.
In her work, she explores issues related to identity, combining elements of activism with personal histories. Her interests include topics related to Eastern Europe, migration and postcolonialism. She works within the public space ("In Ukraine" happening). Krivich lives in Warsaw and works at the Academy of Arts in Szczecin in the Photography and Postartistic Activities Studio. Since the beginning of the russian invasion of Ukraine, Yulia has been co-managing the Solidarity Community Center “Sunflower” located in the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.
This exhibition and related program has been generously funded by the Austrian Cultural Forum, and has been co-organized between Stroboskop and the Austrian Cultural Forum in Warsaw
