Kitchen Table Conversation with Lina Issa

ArtEZ Studium generale welcomes Lebanese artist Lina Issa for this edition of the Kitchen Table Conversations. Together, we will explore issues of home, (dis)placement, cultural identity and empathy. In this personal encounter, everyone brings something to the table.

What if, if I took your place? Could I feel what you feel? Could my body remember what your body remembers? How could a body become a home?
Groundless as I am, my work locates itself and me in the limbs of this unstable factor called ‘the other’ – you. Where to go and how to go on is dependent on my encounter with you. My ‘I’ does not want to be without the ‘we’. I believe in vulnerability and in empathy.

The literal displacement and re-placement of my body and that of others is at the core of my work. Inspired by the experience of migration, I physically put myself in situations that create the conditions for the unfolding of new relationships and encounters, real and imagined narratives and subjectivities. In this Kitchen Table Conversation, I would like to share how that has been forming me and my artistic practice, and invite you to share how your experience of identity, place, and embodiment is implicated in yours. We will do so through story-telling, playful exercises and showing work.

I long for our encounter.

Take a seat at the table
Then, bring a ‘taste’ to the Kitchen Table Conversation. A taste which has a special personal memory or a particular significance for you. Something that reminds you of a story or an experience the moment you taste it. You could think of a herb, a fruit, or a specific ingredient of a dish. A small portion is enough. Everything is welcome.

The Kitchen Table Conversations
A community of makers from different disciplines who gather regularly to reflect on ideas of place and belonging. Which stories and traces are related to (contested) notions of home?