“What’s Left Behind”: Curated by 11:11 Art Collective

This exhibition is an eclectic collection of Palestinian/SWANA artists that consists of painting, printmaking, textiles and video work. This body of work evokes the fragments of identity, grief and steadfastness, how the human experience endures catastrophe and how to continue mending these collective wounds through each individual's chosen art form. This show is curated by A.B. Bedran, the head curator of 11:11 Art Collective in collaboration with Random Sample.

Video by Yasmine Omari

About the Artists:

Amel Abdullah

“I had a few ideas about what I could make and contribute to this gallery, and they were mainly inspired by the Palestinian motifs like the flag and the country's official flower the Faqqua iris and the Palestinian poppy!!! Crochet is the main form of art because I’ve recently become a bit obsessed with it and recently found out that it had originated in parts of ancient Egypt and parts of the Arabian world and then got popularized during the hippie era in america. And this gives me great pride because it gives me a connection to my country ( Palestine )!!!

The protestors are an oil pastels piece of many faces you may have seen in real life. All of them are Nashville based protesters.”

Saif Alsaegh

“My films lean towards the non-fiction, experimental and poetic form. Poetry in cinema slows time or magnifies detail. In tiny, vivid visual details there is something vast and universal, particularly when the object or gesture chosen illuminates the displacement of emotion onto a seemingly coincidental thing. My films aim to give the story and its emotion a sensory reality through creating similar displacement. I try to draw from my memory of growing up in Iraq, as part of the indigenous Chaldean/Assyrian minority, and my present in the US to find those kinds of harsh or romantic moments, and contrast them with the strangely calm and uncertain life I have in the US.”

Ali El-Chaer (b. 1995, they/he)

is a trans diasporic Palestinian illustrator and painter, currently living in Nashville, TN. They received their bachelors in fine arts at Austin Peay State University (2018) and have since gone on to show their work in Jordan, South Africa, and New York. He has worked as assistant at Turnip Green Creative Reuse, the Frist Art Museum, and the Tennessee State Archives and then founded a community collective called Nour Nashville, catering towards political education, organizing, and outreach.

His present work has transitioned into tackling intense interpersonal emotions around the ongoing Palestinian genocide and continued displacement, pulling from archived political posters, Byzantine art, and Fayum mummies. Through their engagement with history, he has been able to reclaim and uncover lost traditions or books and offer it back up to a Palestinian audience; in one instance finding a lost portion of his family to reconnect with.

Mona Gazala

is a Palestinian-American artist living in west central Ohio. She holds a masters degree from the Ohio State University in studio arts with a specialization in city/regional planning. Her practice, which is multi-disciplinary and often socially engaged, explores and exposes dynamics of power and systems of oppression that often manifest in the built environment. This includes what is visible as well as what has been erased in structures, neighborhoods and geographies.

Gazala is the recipient of numerous grants from the Ohio Arts Council, Greater Columbus Arts Council, Franklinton Arts District, Puffin Foundation West, Ohio Alliance for Arts Education, Decapital, and the Hishmeh Foundation, to undertake creative work centered on community-building, social justice and activism. 

Yara Kassem Mahajena (b. 1993)

is a multidisciplinary artist from Palestine. Her work explores trauma, with a recent focus on political trauma and its connection to animal resistance in Palestine.Yara earned her Bachelor's (2017) and Master's degree(2022) (both with honors) from Haifa University, and a community art degree (with honors) from Beit Berl College. She also holds a degree (with honors) in leadership, project management, and politics from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, USA. 

Yara works as a lecturer at Haifa University and worked as a public relations coordinator at the Givat Haviva Art Gallery and as a project coordinator at Bezalel Academy and Umm Al Farm Art Gallery Excellence Center for Arts and Design. She taught foreign language through art as a Fulbright adjunct lecturer at Mercy College in NY and politics in arts as an adjunct lecturer at Haifa University. Yara has participated in several art residencies, including The Nomad Curator in Cairo, Egypt; The Gästeatelier Krone in Aarau, Switzerland; and The BS Projects in Braunschweig, Germany.

Sham Mhameed

is a visual artist from Muawiyah. She completed her bachelor’s degree in visual arts with honors from the University of Haifa in 2023. She completed her teaching certificate in visual arts from Beit Berl College in 2024. She participated in solo and group exhibitions, including :

•Group exhibition 2023 graduation exhibition , university of Haifa , lihi cohen

•Group exhibition 2023 " Publishing " , Hagit Pelag Rotem , Yuval Sa'ar

•Group exhibition 2024 Gaza - A Moment of Becoming , Qattan Foundation.

Her body of work focuses on painting. Through her artistic works, she searches for links between memories, feelings, fantasy, and politics. Temporaries blend in her artistic work, seeking to bridge the gaps between these different temporalities and create a new kind of narrative.

Yasmine Omari

is a Palestinian audiovisual artist that utilizes documentary and studio-created footage to illustrate a metaphysical dimension through layered and surreal visuals/audio compositions. Her artistic vernacular serves as a vehicle to explore the intricate landscapes of inner-states, including nostalgia, identity, emotions, and imaginative spaces.

Shahed Qubbaj

lives in the West Bank and is a student at Birzeit University. Her video project When she first arrived to heaven follows the journey of a palestinian that lived her whole life in diaspora, returning to the land, searching for the meaning behind all the sacrifices given to it, and then connection with the land, learning what it takes to be Palestinian, and falling in love with this “heaven” in the process.

The video project is just a bunch of many different shots that have been taken during her three years living in heaven, some are quite old and others were taken for this project, but the goal was to put the viewer in her place, to see this heaven the way she sees it, telling her story.