The Perlman Teaching Museum has received a grant from the Teiger Foundation to host Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme: Only sounds that tremble through us. The exhibition will come to Carleton from the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Boston for exhibition in Northfield during Winter Term of 2025.
Working across a range of media—including moving-image installations, sound, performance, and poetry—Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s artwork centers themes of collectivity, resilience, and memory. The exhibition will feature three bodies of artwork from research spanning the past decade and will be designed in close conversation with the artists.
Its centerpiece, May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth: Only sounds that tremble through us (2020–22), merges video fragments of communal song and dance from Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen culled from social media and mixed with filmed performances created with a dancer and three musicians in response to these videos. The exhibition will be laid out across the Perlman’s two gallery spaces.
Sara Cluggish, Director and Curator of the Perlman Teaching Museum, will develop a robust events program seeking out collaborations across the college. Programming with faculty and student groups will extend the interdisciplinary, political, and cultural value of the exhibition. Plans include an artist talk; curator- and student-led tours; an Arabic poetry workshop; and parallel screening program. A workshop for Dance students will be led by Twin Cities-based Palestinian-American dancer Leila Awadallah. The museum will also collaborate with its staff of student workers to produce an audio tour of the exhibition.
The Teiger Foundation supports U.S.-based, curator-led initiatives in contemporary visual art. It affirms the importance of visual art and experimental practice to culture and society at large, and therefore positions its work in support of racial justice and against white supremacy, in support of free expression, and toward an equitable transition from fossil fuels amidst the climate crisis.