What is a ‘Home’?

ālmamar, 2019 and the ‘Cultural Shell’

A cultural-experience and residency program, an extension of my personal journeys through creative thinking and place-making.

I always find myself coming back to the notion of ‘home’. Mediated through the prism of our worlds, the physical spaces we inhabit form the basis of our cultural, social and personal identities. In turn, my work has always been concerned with questioning this continuity of meaning we attribute to personal objects and private spaces; a quest for equilibrium between the threads of tradition which stretch back in time, and the dynamism of modernity and technology that moves us forward into the future. It is the humble part I hope to play in the advancement of our culture whilst preserving the historical richness of its traditions.

Fakhri El Ghezal’s exhibition “A Trip to Redeyef”. Photography: © Hareth Tabbalat 2019

How can I co-author a journey towards questioning and exploring the notion of ‘home’?

ālmamar is a residency program whose mandate within its first year of operation is to host the Cultural Shell, a creative space not dedicated to one discipline, but to the choreographies of interdisciplinary collaboration. By crafting a program of cultural experiences within an abandoned 53m²/ 3- bedroom house (b.1957), ālmamar seeks to incubate practices and artworks particularly reflecting on the evolution of traditional values, critical arts practice, and the notion of transience within the context of Jordan. It is a personal project which seeks to test the boundaries between what we practice ourselves, and what we perform in the world; a meeting point between these processes as they embark on a creative journey of creation.