Chapter Gallery: 6 August – 20 November 2022
Call the Waves is a group exhibition and public programme which emerges from interconnected intimacies with different bodies of water. Grounded in long-term curatorial research in Wales, Morocco and Palestine, Call the Waves brings together an ensemble of voices, a polyphony of tales. Through underground waterways, springs, rivers and seas the artists, musicians, and historians in this exhibition propose a reclaiming of songs and stories, histories and futures.
Call the Waves follows the many ways in which we can think with and learn from water, emerging from investigations into the deep transformations and complex dynamics that shape our landscapes of belonging. The exhibition holds the reverberations of displacement and extraction as they are interwoven with destinies brutally transformed by colonialism and modernisation. In parallel, we summon the many waves of remembrance, and the intersecting underground channels of resistance that shape and share counter-imaginaries of existence across present, past and future. Attuning to the specificities of each work and story told, Call the Waves opens a space where the poetics of watery-words can articulate the making of infinite watery-worlds.
Seine is a film installation by artist Kandace Siobhan Walker. Centering on the weaving of a seine fishing net, the style of net the artist’s father makes on Sapelo Island off the coast of Georgia (USA), Kandace explores ways of returning to indigenous ecological knowledge through connecting with ancestral traditions. In the film we see the artist teaching herself how to weave a seine net and we hear poetry which speaks of water as memory, ecology as future, community as cosmology, mythology as knowledge. We see the artist, alone, dragging a net designed to be cast by a group of hands. Pursuing strategies for transplanting displaced and dis-remembered traditions onto here-now, Kandace figures water as a site of resistance and revival, the shore a place for casting out and calling in.
Dispersed across the galleries, Aghmat is a series of drawings on fabric by artist and poet Noureddine Ezarraf. Reflecting on the work of rural sociologist Paul Pascon, Aghmat considers how the introduction of colonial geometries of extravism and the ‘modernisation’ of water management, altered social, temporal, cultural and agri-cultural practices. Aghmat, now a small town next to Marrakech (Morocco), was a prominent Amazigh crossroad in the 9th Century. Its name, ‘the dye’, owed to Aghmat’s agricultural activity within the arid region of El Haouz. On fabrics dyed with locally grown pomegranate, eucalyptus, oak and walnut tree, Noureddine studies two bodies of water and their technologies, inscriptions of the making and remaking of land, agriculture, and water practices through time. Creating a palimpsest of lines and matters, Aghmat complicates the binary distinction between modernity and tradition, while writing an ode to the modes of belonging that these two interwoven water infrastructures encapsulate.
Borrowing from the sonic qualities of whispers, Bint Mbareh constructs a soft chamber in which to listen to secrets - and possibly tell them too. Stellar Footprints draws on the astrologically led agricultural systems of Palestine to explore how the sky imprints its secrets onto the land and how those secrets project into the future, replacing contemporary conceptions of ‘sustainability’ with indigenous invitations to undo linear time. Stellar Footprints creates a conduit between constellations in the sky and rock formations on the land. The work is dedicated to Palestinian folklore and to four constellations mentioned in Al-Qazvini's 13th Century cosmography Ajāʼib al-makhlūqāt (Wonders of Creation). Bint Mbareh invites you to step inside the chamber and listen.
In SURGE, a series of works from artist Fern Thomas, you are invited to dowse different waters of potential. Drawing on the idea of territories of care, as traditionally seen in the model of the Parish diocese, Fern looks to the histories of diocese boundaries reaching out over the sea. Arising from a poetic text which calls on waters of consent, waters of unrest, waters of desire, waters of what is lost, waters of undoing, waters of steadfastness and waters of oracular visions, Fern seeks out the ancient future wisdom held within all water. The text forms a key for the floor-based sculpture which maps these different waters, above which is suspended a dowsing pendulum, a receiver and transmitter for approaching the water as an oracle. Fern offers the question, ‘What would happen if the waters within us began to rise?’
Rawy al-Anhar (Quenching Rivers) is an installation by historian, pedagogue and writer Alia Mossallam, which traces how stories travel through time, through music and through the streams of water that connect us. Since 2010 Alia has been researching the marginalised histories of the Aswan High Dam, which was built between 1960 and 1970 across the Nile in Aswan, Egypt, and created a 500 km-long reservoir that displaced more than 100,000 Nubian people. Rawy al-Anhar draws our attention to this history as refracted through the (hi)story of one family and the bodies of water their story passes through. Through a family archive, a British colonial archive, and stories from a book of folktales, Alia traces their story from the Nubian village of Abu-Simbel, through Aswan, down through the Nile, to the Mediterranean Sea, to the Thames and back to Lake Nubia, moving across time through songs, photographs, maps, winds, petitions and whispers of resistance.
Artist and musician Maya Al Khaldi further follows a thread through time and memory to create sing for them to see, an expanded sound installation. Working with memories embedded in the landscape, dislocated rituals and scattered musical heritage, Maya has reassembled songs learnt from the Maqam keeper of Maqam al-Nabi Ayoub - a shrine situated near a spring of the same name in the village of Ras Karkar in Palestine. The spring, now surrounded by Israeli military outposts, was once a source for communal washing, drinking and healing and sing for them to see reimagines the time when the water was flowing, and voices were singing. Through this new work Maya attempts to bring a non-linear time into the imagination, summoning water and everything that comes.
Call the Waves is co-curated by SWAY and QANAT, held collaboratively by Francesca Masoero, Louise Hobson and Shayma Nader.
The exhibition is accompanied by a public programme of performances, talks and workshops unfolding at Chapter Arts Centre and online, in dialogue with artists and groups gathering in Barry, Marrakech and Ramallah. Exhibiting artists Alia Mossallam, Bint Mbareh, Fern Thomas, Kandace Siobhan Walker, Maya Al Khaldi and Noureddine Ezarraf will each contribute events, alongside writers, researchers and curators Astrida Neimanis, Margarida Mendes and Sarah Shin. This programme will run across the duration of the exhibition.
This exhibition was commissioned by Chapter Arts Centre and the project is supported by the Arts Council of Wales and Wales Arts International.
Oriel Chapter: 6 Awst - 20 Tachwedd 2022
Arddangosfa grŵp a rhaglen gyhoeddus yw Call the Waves, sy’n deillio o gysylltiadau agos rhyng-gysylltiedig gyda gwahanol gyrff dŵr. Wedi’i seilio ar ymchwil guradurol hirdymor yng Nghymru, Moroco a Phalesteina, mae Call the Waves yn dod ag ensemble o leisiau ynghyd, yn bolyffoni o chwedlau. Drwy ddyfrffyrdd tanddaearol, ffynhonnau, afonydd a moroedd, mae’r artistiaid, y cerddorion a’r haneswyr yn yr arddangosfa yma’n cynnig adennill caneuon a straeon, hanes a dyfodol.
Mae Call the Waves yn dilyn y ffyrdd niferus y gallwn feddwl gyda dŵr a dysgu ganddo, yn deillio o ymchwiliadau i’r trawsnewidiadau dwys a’r ddeinameg gymhleth sy’n siapio ein tirweddau perthyn. Mae’r arddangosfa’n dal atsain dadleoliad ac echdyniad, wrth iddyn nhw gael eu cydblethu â hunaniaethau sydd wedi’u trawsnewid yn greulon gan wladychiaeth a moderneiddio. Ochr yn ochr â hyn, rydyn ni’n galw ar y tonnau niferus o gofio, a’r sianeli tanddaearol o wrthsefyll rhyngblethol, sy’n siapio ac yn rhannu gwrthddychmygion bodolaeth ar draws y presennol, y gorffennol a’r dyfodol. Mewn cytgord â nodweddion penodol pob darn o waith a stori a gaiff ei hadrodd, mae Call the Waves yn agor gofod lle gall barddoniaeth geiriau dyfriog gyfleu cread bydoedd dyfraidd diderfyn.
Gosodwaith ffilm gan yr artist Kandace Siobhan Walker yw Seine. Gan edrych ar wehyddu rhwyd bysgota sân, sef y math o rwyd mae tad yr artist yn ei greu ar Ynys Sapelo oddi ar arfordir Georgia (UDA), mae Kandace yn archwilio ffyrdd o ddychwelyd at wybodaeth ecolegol frodorol drwy gysylltu â thraddodiadau hynafol. Yn y ffilm, rydyn ni’n gweld yr artist yn addysgu ei hunan sut i wehyddu rhwyd sân, ac rydyn ni’n clywed barddoniaeth sy’n siarad am y dŵr fel cof, ecoleg fel dyfodol, cymuned fel cosmoleg, a mytholeg fel gwybodaeth. Rydyn ni’n gweld yr artist ar ei phen ei hunan yn llusgo rhwyd sydd wedi’i dylunio i gael ei thynnu gan grŵp o ddwylo. Gan ddilyn strategaethau ar gyfer trawsblannu traddodiadau sydd wedi’u dadleoli a’u dad-gofio i’r presennol, mae Kandace yn archwilio dŵr fel safle gwrthsafiad ac adfywiad, a’r lan yn lle ar gyfer bwrw allan a galw i mewn.
Wedi’i dosbarthu ar draws yr orielau, mae Aghmat yn gyfres o luniadau ar ffabrig gan yr artist a’r bardd Noureddine Ezarraf. Gan fyfyrio ar waith y cymdeithasegydd gwledig Paul Pascon, mae Aghmat yn ystyried sut mae cyflwyno geometreg wladychol o echdyniaeth a ‘moderneiddio’ dulliau rheoli dŵr wedi newid ffyrdd o berthyn ac arferion cymdeithasol, tymhorol, diwylliannol ac amaethyddol. Roedd Aghmat, sydd bellach yn dref fach drws nesaf i Marrakech (Moroco), yn groesffordd Amazighaidd amlwg yn y nawfed Ganrif. Cafodd ei henw, sef ‘y llifyn’, diolch i weithgarwch amaethyddol Aghmat yn ardal grin El Haouz. Ar ffabrigau wedi’u lliwio â phomgranad, ewcalyptws, derw a chnau Ffrengig sydd wedi’u tyfu’n lleol, mae Noureddine yn astudio dau gorff dŵr a’u technolegau, arysgrifau creu ac ail-greu arferion tir, amaethyddiaeth, a dŵr dros amser. Gan greu palimpsest o linellau a materion, mae Aghmat yn cymhlethu’r gwahaniaeth deuaidd rhwng moderniaeth a thraddodiad, gan ysgrifennu awdl i’r ffyrdd o berthyn y mae’r ddau seilwaith dŵr rhyng-gysylltiedig yma’n eu cyfleu.
Gan fenthyca gan rinweddau sonig sibrydion, mae Bint Mbareh yn adeiladu siambr feddal i wrando ar gyfrinachau ynddi - ac o bosib eu dweud nhw hefyd. Mae Stellar Footprints yn defnyddio systemau amaethyddol Palesteina a arweinir gan astroleg i archwilio sut mae’r awyr yn argraffu ei chyfrinachau ar y tir, a sut mae’r cyfrinachau yna’n ymddangos yn y dyfodol, gan ddisodli cysyniadau cyfoes o ‘gynaliadwyedd’ gyda gwahoddiadau brodorol i ddad-wneud amser llinol. Mae Stellar Footprints yn creu cyswllt rhwng cytserau yn yr awyr a ffurfiannau cerrig ar y tir. Mae’r gwaith wedi’i gyflwyno i lên gwerin Palesteina ac i bedwar cytser a gaiff eu crybwyll yng nghosmograffi Al-Qazvini o’r 13eg Ganrif Ajāʼib al-makhlūqāt (Rhyfeddodau’r Cread). Mae Bint Mbareh yn eich gwahodd i gamu i’r siambr ac i wrando.
Yn SURGE, cyfres o weithiau gan yr artist Fern Thomas, cewch eich gwahodd i ddewinio gwahanol ddyfroedd potensial. Gan ddefnyddio’r syniad o diriogaethau gofal, fel y gwelir yn draddodiadol ym model esgobaeth y Plwyf, mae Fern yn edrych ar hanesion ffiniau esgobaethau gan estyn allan dros y môr. Gan godi o destun barddonol sy’n galw ar ddyfroedd cydsynio, dyfroedd aflonyddwch, dyfroedd dymuniad, dyfroedd yr hyn a gollwyd, dyfroedd dad-wneud, dyfroedd sefydlogrwydd, a dyfroedd gweledigaethau doeth, mae Fern yn chwilio am ddoethineb hynafol y dyfodol sydd i’w gael ym mhob dŵr. Mae’r testun yn ffurfio allwedd ar gyfer y cerflun o’r llawr, sy’n mapio’r gwahanol ddyfroedd yma, ac uwch ei ben mae pendil dewin dŵr, derbynnydd a throsglwyddydd ar gyfer dynesu at y dŵr fel oracl. Mae Fern yn cynnig y cwestiwn, ‘Beth fyddai’n digwydd pe bai’r dyfroedd ynddon ni yn dechrau codi?’
Gosodwaith yw Rawy al-Anhar (Torri Syched Afonydd) gan yr hanesydd, y dysgawdwr, a’r awdur Alia Mossallam, sy’n olrhain sut mae straeon yn teithio drwy amser, drwy gerddoriaeth, a thrwy’r ffrydiau o ddŵr sy’n ein cysylltu. Ers 2010, mae Alia wedi bod yn ymchwilio i hanesion wedi’u hymyleiddio Argae Uchel Aswan, a adeiladwyd rhwng 1960 a 1970 ar draws yr Afon Nîl yn Aswan, yr Aifft, ac a greodd gronfa 500km o hyd a dadleoli dros 100,000 o bobl Nubia. Mae Rawy al-Anhar yn tynnu ein sylw at yr hanes yma, fel y caiff ei ddargyfeirio drwy hanes-stori un teulu a’r cyrff o ddŵr mae eu stori’n mynd drwyddynt. Drwy archif deuluol, archif wladychol Brydeinig, a straeon o lyfr llên gwerin, mae Alia yn olrhain eu stori o bentref Abu-Simbel yn Nubia, drwy Aswan, i lawr drwy’r Nîl, i Fôr y Canoldir, i’r Tafwys ac yn ôl i Lyn Nubia, gan symud ar draws amser drwy ganeuon, ffotograffau, mapiau, gwyntoedd, deisebau, a sibrydion gwrthsafiad.
Mae’r artist a’r cerddor Maya Al Khaldi yn dilyn edefyn ymhellach drwy amser a chof i greu sing for them to see, sef gosodwaith sain estynedig. Gan weithio gydag atgofion sydd wedi’u gwreiddio yn y dirwedd, defodau dadleoledig a threftadaeth gerddorol wasgaredig, mae Maya wedi ailffurfio’r caneuon a ddysgodd gan geidwad Maqam al-Nabi Ayoub - cysegrfa sy’n agos at ffynnon â’r un enw ym mhentref Ras Karkar ym Mhalesteina. Roedd y ffynnon, sydd bellach wedi’i hamgylchynu gan allbyst milwrol Israel, unwaith yn ffynhonnell ar gyfer golchi cymunedol, yfed a iacháu, ac yn sing for them to see mae Maya’n ail-ddychmygu’r cyfnod pan oedd y dŵr yn llifo a lleisiau’n canu. Drwy’r gwaith newydd yma mae Maya’n ceisio dod ag amser aflinol i’r dychymyg, gan alw ar y dŵr a phopeth a ddaw.
Mae Call the Waves wedi’i gyd-guradu gan QANAT a SWAY, a gynhelir ar y cyd gan Francesca Masoero, Louise Hobson, a Shayma Nader.
I gyd-fynd â’r arddangosfa mae rhaglen gyhoeddus o berfformiadau, sgyrsiau a gweithdai a gynhelir yng Nghanolfan Gelfyddydau Chapter ac ar-lein, mewn deialog gydag artistiaid a grwpiau sy’n dod ynghyd yn y Barri, Marrakech, a Ramallah. Bydd yr artistiaid sy’n arddangos eu gwaith, Alia Mossallam, Bint Mbareh, Fern Thomas, Kandace Siobhan Walker, Maya Al Khaldi a Noureddine Ezarraf oll yn cyfrannu digwyddiadau, ochr yn ochr â’r awduron, yr ymchwilwyr a’r curaduron Astrida Neimanis, Margarida Mendes a Sarah Shin.
Comisiynwyd yr arddangosfa yma gan Ganolfan Gelfyddydau Chapter, a chefnogir y prosiect gan Gyngor y Celfyddydau a Chelfyddydau Rhyngwladol Cymru.
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Alia Mossalam
Alia Mossalam is a cultural historian, educator and writer based in Berlin. Alia is interested in songs that tell stories and stories that tell the experiences of people behind the events that make World History. Alia has taught at the Cairo Institute for Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Free University in Berlin, and she founded the History Workshops ‘Ihky ya Tarikh’. She is currently working on her first book as Fellow of the EUME program at the Transregional Studies Forum in Berlin.
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Bint Mbareh
Bint Mbareh is a sound researcher based in London. Bint Mbareh’s work with music began with researching rain-summoning songs in Palestine, and she continues to work with ideas of time bending, building and challenging settler colonial ideas of linear time. She has recently performed at the Mardin Biennale (2022), Mophradat's Read the Room Festival (2022) and Hoda Siahtiri’s symposium on Loss and Resilience - No Body’s Body ( 2022).
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Fern Thomas
Fern Thomas is an artist from Wales, based in Swansea. Fern’s practice is based within the field of Social Sculpture with a focus on re-imagined histories, ritual, place-based knowledge and alternative pedagogies. She is currently a Future Wales Fellow with Arts Council Wales and Natural Resources Wales and Artist in Residence for Ancient Connections. Fern recently presented Spirit Mirror – a solo exhibition at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea.
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Kandace Siobhan Walker
Kandace Siobhan Walker is a Canadian-born Jamaican Gullah-Geechee writer and filmmaker. She is an editor at bath magg. She was a recipient of an Eric Gregory Award and was the winner of The White Review Poet’s Prize in 2021. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Kaleido, will be published by Bad Betty Press in 2022. She grew up in Wales and lives in London. She is represented by Abi Fellows at The Good Literary Agency.
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Maya Al Khaldi
Maya Al Khaldi is an artist, musician and composer from Palestine, based in Jerusalem. Maya’s work explores voice and the music of the past and present, working with archival materials to imagine the future. She teaches music theory and voice at the Edward Said national conservatory and with a Terre Des Hommes project in Jerusalem, Palestine. She has most recently released her first solo album Other World.
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Noureddine Ezarraf
Noureddine Ezarraf is an artist, essayist and a bricoleur poet living and working in Marrakech, Morocco. Through a multidisciplinary and hybrid practice, his work spans from research into the institutes interconnecting architecture and proxemics with the politics embedded in listening, to the iconologies and rhetorics of tourism as an hyper-colonisation of spaces
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SWAY
SWAY is a collaborative project in Barry, tethered to the town’s hyper-tidal waters on the coast of South Wales. Between an estuary and the sea, Sway proposes collective conversations on attachments, entanglements, communing and collective-making across the local landscape. With the spring tides of March 2022 SWAY began to host artists, researchers, writers and residents in multidisciplinary dialogues, public programmes and other activities in hydrological time at the shore. Sway is curated by Louise Hobson, an independent curator based in Barry. Louise is also Deputy Director of Peak Cymru.
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QANAT
QANAT is a collective platform exploring the politics and poetics of water to reflect on, and act upon the multiple contextual configurations of the commons in Morocco and beyond. Drawing from the legacy of the qanat (or khettara) system of water harvesting at the foundation of Marrakech, QANAT proposes to develop collective imaginaries to speculate on new spatial and epistemological configurations for the city. In parallel, it branches out to resonant reflections and actions in order to learn from other local struggles and knit them together into transnational patterns of solidarity and exchange. QANAT was initiated at LE 18 in 2017 by Francesca Masoero, cultural organiser, curator and researcher based in Marrakech. Shayma Nader is a visual artist, independent curator and researcher based in Ramallah. She has been collaborating with QANAT since 2017.
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Chapter Gallery
Chapter Gallery is an international arts space that commissions, produces and presents contemporary visual and live art projects. Chapter offers an ambitious, challenging and wide-ranging programme of exhibitions, residencies, commissions and events by established Welsh and international artists.