Artists in Conversation: Reimagining spaces and restoring lost histories

Kalila wa Dimna: Ancient Tales for Troubled Times

A talk exploring the ways in which artistic practice seeks to restore ‘lost’ voices and histories and reimagine spaces and places.

Join three artists from the exhibition Kalila wa Dimna: Ancient Tales for Troubled Times in discussion: Rayan Elnayal, Jean Morris, and Vaishali Prazmari. Reflecting on their own heritages and research based creative processes, Rayan, Jean, and Vaishali will explore the ways in which their artistic and writing practices seek to restore ‘lost’ voices, languages and histories and to reimagine mobile spaces and places, at the boundaries of diverse cultures. They will also discuss their responses to the fables in Kalila wa Dimna and their approach to the themes raised by the exhibition.In diverse creative practices (hand painted, digitally designed, textual), Rayan, Jean, and Vaishali pose important questions: How do we investigate personal and global histories despite the absence of language, primary source material and/or myopic points of view? How do we ‘translate’ the past so that it’s relevant to sociopolitical and cultural issues in the present? Rayan’s work blends her expertise in architecture with magical realism to visualise and speculate on fictional spaces. She is interested in how magic realist techniques can aid in the production of ethnocentric futurisms in Sudan, the SWANA (the South-west Asian/North African) region and its diaspora. Her interest in magic realism and the idea of ‘Afrabia’ initially started as part of her architecture thesis project at the University of Greenwich and remains an on-going project.Jean is interested in utilizing creative methodologies that complement scholarly research. These methods include the lyrical, the palimpsest and the collage; using old stories to make new ones that are timely, pertinent and can touch contemporary audiences. Focusing on the mouse's narrative, Jean's approach to the Kalila wa Dimna fables creates a panel of poems in which the mouse's words ‘migrate’ into different environments and timescapes. In this way the mouse's story gives fresh insight into the predicament of forced migration. Vaishali’s work is characterised by multilingual fluency across different painting traditions, working with the nested tale format and the art of interruption and reinterpreting historical texts in an act of translation across visual languages. She incorporates elements from a variety of cultures, including her own Chinese, Indian and Persian heritage into vivid and detailed pieces, many of which take the form of miniature oil paintings that bring together eastern and western practices.The talk will be chaired by curators Rania Mneimneh and Ghazaleh Zogheib.Details for how to attend the talk online via Zoom will be sent upon booking.Speaker and chair biographiesRayan Elnayal is a Sudanese British artist/designer based in London. She uses the skills she obtained from her architecture background to visualise and speculate on fictional spaces. She is interested in how magic realist techniques can aid in the production of ethnocentric futurisms in Sudan, the SWANA (the South-west Asian/North African) region and its diaspora. Since graduating with a degree in Architecture, Rayan’s work has been featured in several publications and she has held two solo exhibitions in Central London. Rayan has also participated in events around diversity in creative industries. http://rayanelnayal.com/ Dr Jean Morris is a creative writer and researcher. Her work applies creative-writing practices to historical research, exploring migratory themes such as radicalisation, border crossing and the lure of promised lands. Jean’s explorations circumnavigate the periphery of the archive, a place where primary sources are unstable or most often, absent. It is alongside these voids that she turns to storytelling and the lyrical, creating a neo-archive which re-members that which has been either misrepresented or omitted.Vaishali Prazmari is a visual artist and has been exhibiting for just over fifteen years. Among other degrees, she has an MA from the Slade School of Fine Art and is working towards a PhD from Slade also. In her work she incorporates elements from a variety of cultures including her own Chinese, Indian and Persian heritage into vivid and detailed pieces. Her practice-led PhD at the Slade School of Art includes an ongoing epic project on the 1001 Arabian Nights, which like Kalila wa-Dimna is a book of nested or framed tales. She recently launched a collaborative series called Carpet Pages. https://www.vaishaliprazmari.co.uk/ Rania Mneimneh is a curator, designer and social science researcher with an MA in History of Arts and Architecture from SOAS and an MSc in International Social and Public Policy from LSE, London. Her research focuses on forced displacement, migration, diversity, and social engagement through artistic practice. She curated Tints of Resilience exhibition (P21 Gallery, London, 2018), which explored artistic practice around forced migration and was funded by AFAC, The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture. Rania is currently head of Research and Advocacy at Croydon based charity, Play for Progress (UK). She is based between Singapore, Beirut and London. Ghazaleh Zogheib is a curator, researcher and language teacher. She has an MA from King’s College London and a master’s degree in Literature from La Sorbonne. Her research focuses on the relationship between art, learning and the development of inclusive art spaces. She curated Rayan Elnayal’s Imagining Afrabia for the AWAN festival 2020 and Dema One’s Resilience Exile Mutation at the P21 Gallery, 2019 alongside panel discussions and workshops. Parallel to her work in the arts, Zalia has worked on peacebuilding programmes in conflict zones.For further information about the event, please contact: info@kalilawadimnaexhibit.comhttps://www.kalilawadimnaexhibit.comCheck the public programme of events on: https://www.kalilawadimnaexhibit.com/exhibition-eventsInstagram @kalilawadimnaexhibitFacebook @KalilawaDimnaExhibit