NEW YORK — In a small studio space in Brooklyn, Foundland, a collective comprised of Ghalia Elsrakbi and Lauren Alexander, are putting large issues from a half a world away under a microscope. Outside their studio, in the International Studio & Curatorial Program’s presentation space, they’ve mounted their first-ever exhibition in the United States, “Escape Routes and Waiting Rooms.”
Elsrakbi and Alexander are participating in a summer residency at ISCP, the first sponsored by Edge of Arabia in partnership with Art Jameel with goals to connect Middle Eastern artists with new audiences.
The collective focuses their work on analysis concerning political and social issues, such as immigration, emigration and integration. Since 2011, they’ve been focusing on how those issues have been unfolding online, specifically how social media has been used as a platform for political expression. Foundland says this exhibition was born out of a six-month residency in Cairo. The duo moved closer to Elsrakbi’s native Syria to investigate personal stories of mobility and migration in a country where freedom of movement is strictly limited.
“’Escape Routes’ is really referring to our experience of watching people who are displaced from Syria move to Egypt, witnessing a kind of displaced community forming outside of Cairo,” says Alexander, who is from South Africa but based in Amsterdam. “In the other parts of the exhibition, we try to relate more to the idea of ‘Waiting Rooms’ the status of people who are waiting with the hope that they could possibly return home but probably with their current situation being a permanent situation.”
Foundland uses a white tent — modeled on actual tents used in the Za’tari camp in Jordan, one of the largest Syrian refugee camps in the world — as a symbol for a “Waiting Room” for an unknown future. Projected on the tent are drawings collected from social media connections.
“We approached people with the simple question: could you draw the house that you left behind?” explains Alexander.
“Talking about the house that you left behind is something that is very present in any discussion you open with them,” adds Elsrakbi.
The other major installation is staged around the dinner table of a Syrian family — Elsrakbi’s own. It depicts a schematic map of her family’s movements, where most of its members have migrated over time.
“We’ve tried to give a different perspective on what you really see in the media. It’s quite clear that the conflict is very heavy and it’s bloody and this is what really dominates the image,” says Elsrakbi. “We choose to work with metaphors like a dining table and a tent to bring those little small stories that you don’t hear so much closer to the audience. It’s very difficult to find ways to tell these in the media… art makes space for this.”
As part of the collective’s summer residency as ISCP, they are also investigating Little Syria, the first major Arabic community set up in Lower Manhattan in the late 1800s. The duo will explore the immigration patterns from Arab countries to the United States during that time. They’ll dig into history to discover what the community of Little Syria meant to Manhattan: who were the big figures involved, how did it unfold and, ultimately, how did most of the area get demolished in the end to make way for Battery Park.
“There are a small group of people that are very passionate about putting this area back on the map, particularly people who are interested in Arabic literature and how that has played into the understanding or lack of understanding around what we see today,” says Alexander. “For example, people who were writing in the late 1800s, early 1900s really spoke about connecting East and West in quite an optimistic way, about how the two places interact with each other. These sorts of things are also lost in history. These are things we want to look into: what did this people say about it and what can we learn from that today.”
“Foundland: Escape Routes and Waiting Rooms" is on view through September 26th at the International Studio & Curatorial Program.
