March Meeting 2024: Workshops

Overview

Migrating Flavours
Wi
th Jieun Cho, Jungwon Kim, Gyeol Ko (ikkibawiKrrr)
Ages 17+

Date: Friday, 1 March
Timings: 9:30 am–1:30 pm
Location: Khalid Bin Mohammed School, Sharjah
Language: English



In this interactive workshop, the Seoul based visual research collective ikkibawiKrrr invites participants to reconnect with lost felt and sensory memories of home by remembering fruits from one’s country of origin, recreating these through coloured clay, writing, drawing and other mediums.

IkkibawiKrrr explores linkages between plants and humanity, civilization and natural phenomena, and colonialism and ecology, and has frequently worked with migrant and refugee communities to trace the experience of migration, dislocation and temporality through diverse projects and collaborative art forms.

Reimagining Library Practices
With Lubnah Ansari, Haewon Yoon (Seeds)
Ages 17+

Date: Friday, 1 March
Timings: 9:30 am–1:30 pm
Location: Khalid Bin Mohammed School, Sharjah
Language: English



Drawing inspiration from the stages of the water cycle, this workshop invites participants to take part in four creative exercises that will explore embodied reading practices. Reading is not solely a cognitive process but also an experiential one that is physical, sensory and cultural. It is also an experience that is interactive and involves a process of meaning-making that contributes to rendering it an ‘embodied’ practice. This workshop will also collectively contemplate the historical implications of libraries and texts.

Writing the Truth / Invention of Imagination
With Maya Abu Al Hayyat (Palestine Writing Workshop)
Ages 18+

Date: Friday, 1 March
Timings: 3:00 pm–7:00 pm
Location: Khalid Bin Mohammed School, Sharjah
Language: Arabic



How we articulate ourselves shapes both the meaning and reception of what we express. Writing offers diverse registers: we can use general or specific terms, theoretical or narrative modes, professional, formal language, or intimate, personal language. Despite differences in tonality or audience, a particular perspective will always be conveyed.

Writing can help us make sense of personal or collective crises. This workshop teaches participants to creatively render different forms of ‘truth’ derived from personal stories, testimonies and lived experience. It also weighs the role of recall and imagination in shaping these narratives, while highlighting various writing techniques and approaches relating to questions of voice and authorship.

In our Classroom
With Mishari Al Najjar, Sara Abdulla (in narrative)
Ages 17+

Date: Saturday, 2 March
Timings: 9:30 am–1:30 pm
Location: Khalid Bin Mohammed School, Sharjah
Languages: English and Arabic



Our earliest spatial awareness is often shaped by our routine exposure to schools and the interior architecture of the classrooms. We grow accustomed to familiar vantage points, for instance, looking out of the same window. School buildings, in their most concrete spatial form, also serve as a historical time capsule of the prevailing architectural language of the era in which they were built.

While centring Lala Rukh’s 1987 screenprinting manual In Our Own Backyard, this workshop transforms a classroom into a block printing space. Through the form of task sheets and a set of prompts, participants will be encouraged to use the medium to print their individual memories of school while considering architectural elements within the setting of the Khalid Bin Mohamed School. They will also collectively print on fabric, thus contributing to a shared visual narrative.

Stories of Cinema in the Maghreb
With Touda Bouanani (Intilak Collective)
Ages 17+

Date: Saturday, 2 March
Timings: 9:30 am–1:30 pm
Location: Khalid Bin Mohammed School, Sharjah
Languages: English and French



During this lecture-style workshop Touda Bouanani of Intilak Collective leads participants through the group’s research and study of groundbreaking historical films from post-independence Maghreb countries.

Participants will view excerpts from iconic films such as Assia Djebar’s La Zerda ou les chants de l'oubli (1982) and discuss the postcolonial representation of marginalised female voices and filmmakers from the Maghreb. Choice excerpts from Intilak’s publications En attendant Omar Gatlato (2023) and Ahmed Bounani’s La Septième Porte—Une histoire du cinéma au Maroc de 1907 à 1986 (2021) will help participants further expand their knowledge of post-independence Maghrebi cinema.

Facsimile Publishing Outpost (for Palestine)
With Sofia Niazi, Heiba Lamara, Rose Nordin (OOMK)
Ages 17+

Date: Saturday, 2 March
Timings: 3:00 pm–7:00 pm
Location: Khalid Bin Mohammed School, Sharjah
Language: English



One of My Kind (OOMK), a collaborative publishing practice led by Rose Nordin, Sofia Niazi and Heiba Lamara, hosts a live printing outpost (including Riso printing, binding, packaging and sharing) at MM 2024. Workshop participants will help produce facsimiles of out-of-print publications and zines from Palestinian publishing collectives.

Participants will take part in a publishing discussion about the printing, binding, display and distribution of these publications throughout MM 2024. The planning and live production of these key activities could be seen as an urgent communication conduit—a fast-paced portal for printed matter from Palestine that will facilitate collective engagement and connection.

Radical Socialities: Strategies for a Rediscovery of the Ordinary
With Molemo Moiloa, Nare Mokgotho (MADEYOULOOK)
Ages 17+

Date: Sunday, 3 March
Timings: 9:30 am–1:30 pm
Location: Khalid Bin Mohammed School, Sharjah
Language: English



MADEYOULOOK is a Johannesburg-based interdisciplinary artist collaborative between Molemo Moiloa and Nare Mokgotho. Their works take as their point of departure everyday Black creative practices that have either been historically overlooked or deemed inconsequential.

In this workshop, MADEYOULOOK will talk about the relational model that lies at the political core of their practice as well as some of the working concepts they have developed over their 15-year collaboration, such as ‘communities of practice’, ‘politics versus aesthetics’ and ‘somatic urgencies.’ Informed by their work and their relationships to land and nature, this interactive workshop encompasses a somatic listening process, mapping exercises and collective social action. It encourages participants to consider their individual practices through the lens of ‘radical socialities’—a reference to the term evolved by Margarita Palacios to describe relations to otherness. No specific expertise or level of experience is required.

Your Design... Your Story
With Nisreen Abu Dail, Nermeen Abu Dail (naqsh collective)
Ages 17+

Date: Sunday, 3 March
Timings: 9:30 am–1:30 pm
Location: Khalid Bin Mohammed School, Sharjah
Languages: English and Arabic



Participants will embark on a journey with the founders of naqsh collective—established in 2009 in Amman by sisters Nisreen Abu Dail and Nermeen Abu Dail—to create works in embroidery, stone, wood and metal that combine traditional designs with contemporary aesthetics.

Delving into the art of storytelling and the profound expression of personal heritage through design, the founders will share how they infuse cultural heritage into their meticulously crafted objects and embroidery. Participants can create their own bespoke design objects, drawn from their individual narratives and creativity.

Blooming artistic practice through collective self-publication
With Jazael Olguín Zapata (Cráter Invertido)
Ages 17+

Date: Sunday, 3 March
Timings: 3:00 pm–7:00 pm
Location: Khalid Bin Mohammed School, Sharjah
Language: English



The Mexico-based artist cooperative Cráter Invertido’s workshop engages participants to document, co-create, learn and share their first-hand accounts and experiences of MM 2024 through writing and drawing. Participants will use specially provided notebooks to record important, interesting and remarkable aspects of the gathering. These notebooks serve as a shared space for collective brainstorming.

Through narrative practices, participants will translate their notes into artistic harvests—creative outputs that explore unexpected perspectives, alternative possibilities and collaborative sense-making. The workshop's second part involves collaboratively creating a 36-40-page draft text (2-4 pages per contribution) in A4 size.

Participants will learn Riso printing, finishing, cutting and binding for a self-publication. Approximately 120 publications will serve as an artistic memory of March Meeting 2024. This material offers an artistic and poetic account for participants, organisers and the wider audience.

Registration

These workshops have limited spots. To register your interest, please click here.

Sharjah Art Foundation is committed to making its programmes inclusive and accessible.

Please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) in advance to arrange for any support needed during this session. Support could include ramps for wheelchairs, reserved seats for those with hearing impairments so they can read lips, and sign language interpreters for talks and symposia.