Hobo

(Travelling Pop-Up Mosque)
N&Y in collaboration with Roua Jafar

Refresh #2
Amsterdam Museum
2023 

Our ‘Hobo’ The Traveling Pop-Up Mosque, develops an ample, lively, site-specific art installation that tramps and is willing to perform, paraphrases a unique artistic semi-mosque space in Amsterdam Museum and presents it with a particular view of breaking the stereotypical is a journey of mysticism in itself. The installation features experiential pieces that evoke the non-verbal communication of Islamic culture to activate audiovisual modes of perception, utilizing interactive zones that alter participants’ understanding of their environment. Geometrics manifests Hobo’s sensing zones as an expansive and intricate musical instrument. Through the act of walking through, visitors shape a constantly evolving collaborative musical composition by triggering the sounds of the installation, producing such a cultural resonant that echoes open-ended creative modes of communication. 

Hobo is hereby a representation of spiritual states that tramps and is willing to perform, paraphrasing it from that environment. It is a social experiment—research on the influence of political language on our society by omitting it as much as possible. Our choice of words and so-called global awareness are influenced daily by news items and articles. As a result, this dominates how we see each other and how we treat each other. In this project, we, the artists, makers, and all witnesses of the Hobo look for an immaculate vocabulary with which we connect our cultural and Islamic hybridity with the present and the future. We lean on the Arabic etymology of the word ‘Mosque,’ which stands for assembly – the gathering of people. The state of ‘Traveling’ correlated with the manifestation of this artistic semi-mosque project refers to its continuous tendency toward new people and places that sustain the growth of such a cultural and artistic framing. 

Participating Gang:
Composer Hans Nieuwenhuijsen
Graphic design of Het Boek  Marwa Mezher
Photos and video  George Shahda

The Philosophy Of Shelter

N&Y in collaboration with performance artist Mustafa Alkar

2022

The Philosophy Of Shelter is a collective art project. It is a novel about the nature that society acquires when it practices openness and closure to new mutations that appear in it. It is to reveal the story of a person who lives in a strange place and time in a shelter, or we can say a prefabricated homeland. A homeland that was made based on wisdom full of sins and traces of bloody paws that are outdated and rejecting the truth most of the time. Wisdom observed with black magic made this refuge an actual alienation for body and soul. The story of the refugees who arrived in a magical homeland and wants to scratch the walls and scream. The Philosophy Of Shelter is also about the story of a shelter that can only see the ghost of its refugee. 

The Dome

The meditative, the beauty, and the esthetic image for the oriental civilization. A ceramic "mosaic" connecting the ceiling to the floor. What shape might the Islamic culture take on in the midst of globalization? How does it influence our values? Broken ideals and the new age of doubt about every single taboo. Let us doubt and attract the attention through the sound of rustling pottery in the space- sky // With this geometrical dome and the smell of Aleppo laurel soap // Stamped with Arabic words that express values in culture melted and reformed with time.

The Minaret

"It is not the outward appearance but the idea, the essence of things" this is what Constantin Brâncuşi, the patriarch of modern sculpture, said. The essence of the minaret simulates the pillar of infinity that Brâncuşi completed his conception of the essence of soaring, the circle, the cube, and the pyramid. All of which symbolizes the beginning of infinity. In the streets of Syria the sound of music is hidden in the projection of a calm and spiritual voice. Every day, and in the whole city, voices of the muezzins give the most beautiful atmosphere to shape the identity of the region. The muezzins agreed on playing the oud, the traditional instrument from the Middle East, in the shrine of Hijaz. The Minaret resonates like an oriental oud, a column that connects the earth to the sky in an endless geometric repetition.

Reformation

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

2019

Reformation is a conceptual artwork that tries to tell a story that has repeatedly happened to our cultures which these great human civilizations are based. 
Our global community holds many cultures, but these cultures have been exposed to a lot of obstacles, acts or wars sometimes changing their form.  Here we ask what form cultures acquire when it moves between societies and the stages of the story? And how can we formulate it?

Reformation is an installation in the place that bears the story of an Arabic translation of an ancient Persian poem of the Sophie poet and the ancient philosopher Omar Khayyam. This text was famous in the Arab street and has been composed by many famous writers and singers. The text of this poem has been reformulated several times and has been away from its original form for hundreds of years, today we try to give all this distortion, change and cultural transition a form through this performance in the same time we are trying to say that the transmission of civilization is not necessarily a weakness, but it may be representing it in another way that touches the current reality and tests a new place and a new generation.

Syrian Rally

2019

They are blinded by rusty masks of pain and sorrow
They are the people who struggle to not be noticed by anyone and seeking creative ways of concealment
They race to be not visible more and more
Where there is no struggle in the oppressor's face ... but a struggle for him ... Where revolutions became a platform for new monsters, for new slaves, for a false dream
No one wants to see the beauty of this reality... Because this is called weakness in their time…

This performance is a test of this sorrow, the pain of people whose dreams of freedom have been reduced to be a terrible reality, do you have an idea about these people? You may not be one, how will you sense this experience?

Wake up, Get out of bullying and worn codes, Think of others as propagation of you, Do to save this world, Come back to nature and wash the gloom of the journey then tell me how do you taste the freedom?

Costume Design: Geke Osterfeld

Into The Darkness 

2019

Silent Room & The Dialectic of Trinity

 PAX Utrecht
2018

This sculpture is based on the mission of PAX which is the acquisition of peace through social action. The artwork depicts how humanity can turn away from violence, paving the way to wisdom and peace. The artwork is comprised of a bronze abstract female figure that is enclosed by a triangle of pillars in stone, metal and wood. The female figure's limbs have been left unnaturally yet she radiates tenderness in her expression. The stone pillar consists of stacked angular forms which represent the feeling of actual confinement. For me, this happens when it is a petrified society where dictatorship results in extremism. One that is surrounded by taboos, rules and unwavering opinions. The second pillar is in metal and represents the next phase: moving away from oppression to humanity. It is the strength and courage of those who stand up and speak out, who pry themselves free. The third phase conveys a society in peace and harmony and is represented by wood. This is the only material that is capable of naturally adapting to the environment. It stands for life, fellowship and an attitude that leads to peace. 

Yazan Maksoud- concept and Sculpture
Nasam Abboud- concept and poem
Mohamad Badenjki- calligraphy
Geke Oosterhof and Yazan Maksoud- concept inrichting

Bronze, Metal, Wood and Stone
100x100x100 cm

Nice To Meet You

2017