Artist / Writer
“Shams” is a children’s book written and illustrated by Sundus Abdul Hadi.
In Arabic via Tamer Institute
In English: We Are The Medium
Shams is a little girl made of glass. One fateful day, Shams breaks into a million pieces. We follow Shams’s transformation from a fragile little girl into a survivor, with the help of her own imagination and the guidance of Shifaa, the healer. A story of trauma and empowerment set in an unnamed Arab land, "Shams" transforms tragedy into magical realism, guided by ancestral wisdom. Blending storytelling and powerful illustrations, Shams is brought to life as an otherworldly being in her small universe.”
شمسٌ هي فتاة صغيرة مصنوعة من الزجاج. في يوم مشؤوم، تتحطَّم شمس الى مليون قطعة. اتبَعْ تحوُّل شمس من فتاة صغيرة وهشة الى ناجية، مستعينةً بخيالها الخاص وتوجيهات المُداوية شفاء.
Artist and author Sundus Abdul Hadi has also presented the book as a multimedia storytelling performance, supported by composer Sandhill. Blending storytelling, powerful illustrations, and sound, Shams is brought to life as an otherworldly being in her small universe.
Most recently performed at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Canada, and the Kevorkian Center at NYU, New York, USA.
All illustrations and text is by Sundus Abdul Hadi.
With Arabic calligraphy by renowned Tunisian calligraffiti artist eL Seed.
The book is designed by Lebanese book designer Roï Saade.
The development of the book was funded by the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec.
This documentation references the exhibit and series of events I curated titled “Take Care of Your Self”.
“Take Care of Your Self” is a research-creation project that explores the potential for transcultural dialogue and engagement through the concept of “Care-full curation.” To explore these ideas, I organized a week-long exhibition and series of events held during the summer of 2017 in Montreal titled “Take Care of Your Self: A Transcultural Art Event”. The exhibit, in which I was both participating artist and curator, featured work by 27 artists of colour, namely Arab, Black, Indigenous, Brown and “Other”. The project was a deliberate act in the politicization of self-care in order to better resist, or persist, in the struggles for rights, freedoms and wellbeing. Illustrated by the works in this exhibit, the heavy subjects of trauma, loss and displacement transformed into opportunities for healing and empowerment, foregrounding the concept of self - community - care at the forefront of the discourse on struggle. The exhibit was a testament to how notions of self-care, self-determination and healing have conceptually informed the work of artists dealing with complex issues of struggle since the founding of the Black Panther Party and the art of Emory Douglas.
Through care-full curation, my intention was to foster counter-narratives to the existing structures perpetrated by mainstream media that keep our diverse struggles separated, and to create a safe space illustrated by artworks and conversations on the subject of self-care and struggle. In this lecture, I will draw on the concept of self-care as it is articulated and practiced in Black feminist thought and contemporary social movements. I explore how empowerment can be integrated into an approach of critical curation and intersectionality, and the potential for transformative transcultural convening. I position my own practice as an artist-curator through both theory and method by highlighting the process, goals and outcomes of the exhibition “Take Care of Your Self”.
Artists: Ahmad Naser-Eldein | Aliya Orr [Light Society] | April Banks | Monique Bedard [Aura] | Dana El Masri | Emory Douglas | Jessica Powless | Jiji Kikhia | Joseph Cuillier | Julay “The Peoples Ink” and Allos Abis | Leila Abdelrazaq | Marwa Mubarak | Narmeen Hashim | Niti Marcelle Mueth | Nora Patrich | Roï Saade | Sadaf Rassoul Cameron | Samira Idroos | Serene Al Ahmad and Azza Abbaro | Shanna Strauss and Kevin Calixte | Soukayna | Suhad Khatib | Sundus Abdul Hadi | Susu Attar | Tara Jaffar
Keywords: trauma / healing / empowerment / counter-narrative / social justice / transcultural / convening / intersectionality / safe space / community / marginality
*This project was developed and executed as part of my research-creation MA in Media Studies at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.
Sundus Abdul Hadi co-founded We Are The Medium in 2013.
Independent is the new Major.
We Are The Medium is a global interdisciplinary artist collective, cultural hub and publishing house, founded by Yassin Alsalman and Sundus Abdul Hadi. Believing that the minority is really the majority, we are a team of independent artists and practitioners working with various media using similar theoretical and conceptual goal since our founding in 2013.
The Minority is really The Majority.
The Narratives we saw of our people was not in our hands. In 2013, The Medium was formed as an artist collective and house of creatives. We have since worked with major brands, launched successful campaigns online for music, released books, dropped albums, designed clothing, curated art exhibits and produced films.
Representation of the 'other', counter-narratives, storytelling and inter-nationality are some of the common threads that link our projects, products, artwork and curated events. We serve the community of the margins; displaced, diasporic, undefinable. Our reach into publishing in 2020 is a natural evolution of our work as We Are The Medium, and our aim is to create accessible culture-based printed matter for the masses by members of our artistic and cultural community. Strength in numbers, because numbers don't lie, the media does.
In the next 10 years, we hope to aid in the cultural representation of the 'other', the new citizen - the people of Internationality. We want to share our stories in the hopes of sharing yours.
We work with artists, companies and people through the Arts and Education. We live around, and work for, The World. We Are The Medium.
The New Sumerians is an ongoing project. Check here for more soon.
In collaboration with photographer Ahmad Nasereldein
DIgital Composite Image / Original portrait by Ahmad Nasereldein / 2019
A portrait of the artist.
Digital composite image / 2019
In this digital composite image, I reconstruct the missing facial features in the Mask of Warka using my own face, paying homage to my celestial ancestor, Inanna, and my inner goddess, despite our flaws and traumas.
WARCHESTRA was a project I worked on from 2007-2010. It is a multimedia experience using mixed media painting and sound, about war and culture.
Imagine.
Trumpets trump AK-47’s.
Saxophones covering RPG’s.
Blast Walls emulating zithers.
By replacing weapons of war with musical instruments, the Warchestra experience aims to re-imagine, re-claim and re-invent the war in Iraq.
Today I look at it like a time-capsule of the stories and media images of Iraq during one of its darkest periods, after the US-led war and it’s repercussions.
This project started with my obsessive collecting of media images coming out of Iraq during the post-2003 period. I was so frustrated with the representation of my people as violent, terrorist, oppressed, oppressive, destructive, dead and dying.
I decided to take matters into my own hands and create the images that I wanted to see, of an Iraq rich with culture, heritage, and complexity.
Each artwork is accompanied by a sound piece, in collaboration with musicians and poets from Montreal and the greater diaspora.
Acrylic on canvas / 3 x 4.5 feet / 2008
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas / 3 x 4.5 feet / 2008
[for Gaza]
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas / Diptych 3 x 3.5 each / 2008
Acrylic and mixed media on masonite / 2 x 5 feet / 2010
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas / 2 x 3 feet / 2009
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas / 3.5 x 3.5 feet / 2010
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas / 2 x 3 feet / 2008
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas / 3 x 3.5 feet / 2008
The “Flight” series is a series of artistic works combining digital photo manipulation with mixed media painting and Arabic calligraphy. Juxtaposing images of flying figures with aerial photographs of major Arab cities and lands, or painted environments, the constructed images of the “Flight” series represent a subversive and imagined reality. The series is an attempt to touch on issues that relate to the abnormal circumstances surrounding violence and survival, mobility and identity.
Many of the pieces in this series were in collaboration with my sister Tamara Abdul Hadi, by creating new narratives and contexts to her photographs. The photographs of the divers are originally taken in coastal cities around the Middle East, mainly in Beirut, Gaza and Akka. The act of taking the figure out of their environment and transitioning them from diving to flying becomes a transformative experience, transporting both the figure and the viewer to an imagined space.
The re-imagining of the figures becomes a subversive tool in the context of the refugee crisis currently enveloping the Middle East, the ongoing conflicts, and the up-risings of the past decade. The underlying concept of the project is to highlight healing and empowerment in the face of struggle. Presented as a series, the works reflect a narrative geography of the Middle East and the complex issues facing the land and its people.
Digital collage
Mixed media on canvas, 5ft x 13 ft
Digital collage
Mixed media on canvas, 3 ft x 5.5 ft
With original photographs by Tamara Abdul Hadi
Digital collage
With additional photography by Ridwan Adhami
Digital Collage
Digital collage
Mixed media on canvas, 4.5 ft x 6 ft
Mixed media on canvas, 2 x 5 ft
A love for books will lead you to create your own.
These are unique artist books made on canvas.
Al Nafas, 12 spreads
Al Nafas includes my photographs taken of Iraq from 2004 and 2009, offering a perspective of Iraq through my eyes—a displaced Iraqi. Aerial photographs of the Iraqi landscape between Baghdad and Basra are collaged with young men in flight, while other pages show images of Baghdad’s beauty and its beasts: proud monuments, burdened palm trees, its resilient people, military occupation, and devastating destruction. However, it is more than a picture book. It functions as a counter-image to much of what was shown about Iraq in the mainstream media. It also presents a personal quest for identity and belonging, representing the symbolic closing of a chapter; of acceptance, and healing.
I Love(d) Baghdad, 8 spreads
When I was a little girl, my parents had bought my sister and I a children’s book from one of our visits to Baghdad; it was an illustrated book called “I Love Baghdad,” about the city and its people. I loved this book as a child, and perhaps it had something to do with why Baghdad took such a big piece of my heart growing up. I rediscovered the book as an adult, and was devastated to read the lines. It represented how much destruction Baghdad has faced since my childhood, yet the text still spoke so profoundly about its present state and its past.
I Love(d) Baghdad is my reinterpretation of this childhood book as an adult. By taking the text and subverting it with new images, this book tells both a new and existing tale of the city of Baghdad, illustrated with paintings from the Warchestra series alongside reference slides of Sumerian art and media photographs that informed much of my artwork throughout the research and production of Warchestra (2007–2010).
Creating this book was a cathartic experience of ‘closing the chapter’ on Warchestra and of a certain mindstate that the work was produced within. I Love(d) Baghdad presents the entire series in a multimedia format that acts as a two-dimensional time capsule of post-war Iraq, living in the shadows of its glorious past, and of the world I had formed around my own experience of my homeland, as an artist and displaced Iraqi.
Unique artist book / acrylic, pastel, charcoal and transferred digital photography on canvas / Closed: 14 x 14 3⁄4 inches / Open: 14 x 28 inches / 2010
2017
Unique artist book / acrylic, pastel, and transferred digital photography on canvas / Closed: 11 x 12 inches / Open: 11 x 23.75 inches / 2014
A SERIES ABOUT WALLS.
Digital Photo Manipulation, 2015 / Site Specific, University of Wesleyan
"Divide and Conquer" is about seeing our world differently. The work is centered around the concept of walls and division, mobility, struggle and hope.
The artwork is a way to bring "home" the idea of both the physical and metaphorical walls that we put up to separate people. The walls in the artwork are located at the Al Mustansiriya University campus in Baghdad, photographed by Iraqi photographer Ahmad Mousa, also a student at the University. The walls completely surround his campus, an imposed barrier that makes mobility very difficult, and a daily reminder of the precarious security situation in the country. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq by US and allied forces, “blast walls” were erected all over Baghdad, physically separating neighborhoods and creating divisions in the social fabric of the city.
The title refers to the military strategy of divide and conquer, but also implies the will to conquer the challenges and divisions we face in our every day lives, in any society.
Dedicated to Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha and Razan Abu-Salha of Chapel Hill.
With additional photography by Hira Jafri.
Site Specific Sculpture, 2017 / Telfair Museum “Generation” exhibit
The site-specific sculpture “Divide and Conquer II” was constructed specifically for the exhibition “Generation” at the Jepson Centre, Telfair Museum in Savannah Georgia. “Generation” was an award-winning exhibit featuring work by myself, my sister Tamara, and my mother Sawsan Alsaraf. The exhibit offered a dialogue between our artworks as to how three members of the same family respond artistically to complex themes of representation, identity, and displacement in a contemporary global world.
“Divide and Conquer II” references in form and scale “blast walls” in Baghdad, and the apartheid wall in Palestine. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, blast walls were erected all over Baghdad, physically separating neighbourhoods and creating divisions in the social fabric of the city.
Including this architectural wall in the gallery space creates a literal barrier, an exterior wall in interior space, that confronts physical space. The visitor must choose how to navigate around it. The title refers to the military strategy of divide and conquer, but also implies the will to conquer the challenges and divisions we face in our every day lives, in any society. Artist books “I Love(d) Baghdad” and “Souls Land Closing” were encased and displayed on the wall.
Installation view, Telfair Museum, 2017
Paintings between 2004-2006
Every Wednesday from 2-3pm EST
I started the radio show The Groundbreakers in 2014 on CKUT 90.3fm in Montreal.
The Groundbreakers celebrates groundbreaking artists, musicians, authors, activists of “other” origins. Showcasing cultural pioneers, The Groundbreakers focuses on cross-generational cultural production from the Middle East and Worldwide. Hosted by a collective of hosts from various communities in Montreal, each episode covers a wide array of culture, arts and community, from community building to celebrating otherness.
My features have included:
Emory Douglas, Former Black Panther Minister of Culture.
Suhad Khatib, artist.
Alsarah, of Alsarah and the Nubatones, musician
Hello Psychaleppo, musician
Sandhill, musician
Kindness, musician
Mochilla, photographers / DJs B+ and Coleman
Mashrou' Leila, band
Mahmood Jrere from DAM, hip hop artist
Yasmine Hamdan, musician
Karim Sultan, musician
Karim Jabbari, artist
Danah Abdulla, Kalimat Magazine founder
Dana Masry of Jazmine Sarai, perfumer
Syrian Eyes of the World, artist collective
Niko IS, hip hop artist
Big Hass, radio host
Sara Ahmad / Add a Little Lemon, food blogger
Ahmed Habib, poet / activist
Ali Issa, author
Leila Abdelrazaq, author
Arabs4BlackPower, activists / initiative
