New City Arts presents a solo exhibition, WHAT TERROR, by Joumana Altallal at Welcome Gallery featuring work she created during her New City Arts Fellowship.
New City Arts' Welcome Gallery
114 3rd St. NE, Charlottesville, VA 22902
Art on Display
Walk by Welcome Gallery at 114 3rd St. NE to see Joumana's work through the large storefront window.
Gallery Hours
Want to see the work up close? Private, free, in-person viewings are available between May 23 and 27.
Exhibition Events
Generative Poetry Workshop: May 25 at 7PM (Virtual)
Sponsors: The New City Arts Fellowship in May at Welcome Gallery is supported by a Community Recovery & Catalyst grant from the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, and Maurice Wallace and Pam Sutton-Wallace.
About the Fellowship
The New City Arts Fellowship at Welcome Gallery supports six Charlottesville-area artists from January-June 2021 working on projects related to the theme Next Breath: History, Hate, Possibility, written by Maurice Wallace. During their fellowship, artists are working to address the ongoing impacts of systemic racism and the COVID-19 pandemic through creative projects that deeply and imaginatively relate to breath as the essence of life and freedom. Each artist receives one month in 2021 to transform Welcome Gallery into their studio space, a $400 honorarium, a stocked pantry with their favorite snacks, and an opportunity to engage the community with their work at the conclusion of their fellowship.
To learn more about these artists and their fellowship projects, visit our website. Opportunities to engage with their work are ongoing from January to June 2021.
About the Artist
Joumana Altallal is an Iraqi-Lebanese poet, educator, and Zell Fellow at the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program. Her work explores her family's journey fleeing Iraq, their arrival to Charlottesville, and the subsequent loss of family archives.
For her Fellowship at New City Arts in May 2021, Joumana uses performance, installation, and poetry to center the experience of breath-loss in Iraq, particularly in relation to the respiratory injuries sustained by protestors in the October Revolution of 2019. Following an occupation of major city squares by makeshift tents erected by the people, these protestors called for resistance against a weak government, illegitimate militia control, and a continued occupation by external powers. These tents quickly became safe havens from COVID-19 as they were used, among other things, as initial testing sites by protesting medical staff, while also serving as spaces of regulated social gathering.
Joumana’s work blends the sonic elements of poetry (experienced as a performance of breath) together with a recreation of the space of the October revolution in an ode to Iraq’s futurity.
Image of a work in progress courtesy of the artist.
Photos by Jesús Pino Photography
