Existing Elsewhere

The mobile gaze and European identities under construction

Alaa Hassan, Guevara Namer

Through the black-and-white photos of the photographer Guevara Namer and the photographer Alaa Hassan, both based in Berlin, the exhibition delves into the ways the diaspora changes how displaced people in Europe look at their past.

Souls trapped behind geometric grids encounter and search for connection in Namer’s memories, which reshape her experience of prison in Damascus in present-time Berlin. A sense of distance, loneliness and lovelessness all sprout from the artist’s image and are mirrored in natural contours and someone else’s body.

Nostalgia, safety, and a collective memory of a version of a lost version of Syria emerge from instants of vibrant, ordinary life shot by Hassan before 2011. By disclosing his archive on social networks, he decontextualizes and reframes photos that no longer depict the country. These scenes now exist only in shots and in people’s remembrances. Yet, they serve to retrace and thus reunite memories of the communities still living in Syria and those displaced.

Hassan and Namer relate to each other’s introspections and offer a new collaborative project for the show.