An exhibition project and a collective solidarity ensemble initiated by Nicola Baratto with Raymond Gemayel, Rim Mejdi, Khalid Bouaalam, Yasmine Benabdallah, Fahmy Shahin, Franca Petroni, Circular Ruins & ‘Not to be Published’ zine.
Tears of Fog is an exhibition project delving into the memories of water and the evocative and political potentials of fog as a matter and metaphor for imagining alternative worlds.
The project first emerged through the encounter between the artistic work of Nicola Baratto and the decades-long anthropological work of Jamila Bargach, founder of Dar Si Hmad (Sidi Ifni, Morocco), who composes an enchanting picture of fog as an alternative water source and a material of imagination, rooted in scientific, anthropological, and meteorological principles, as well as socio-political potential. As subject and metaphor, fog carries layers of meaning: it is air, water, memory, and a transient state of being, moving across lands.
Resonating with fog as an ever-changing political and poetical matter, Tears of Fog transformed its shape, moving from an exhibition primarily focusing on the encounter with the sea of fog washing the shores of Sidi Ifni, to a platform hosting a multiplicity of artistic voices with two main intentions. On the one hand, by inviting artists to contribute with their respective research around water cosmologies and political ecologies across different geographies in Morocco and elsewhere, Tears of Fog operates as a container and mirror of multilayered, entangled landscapes and the need to recognize and embrace the complex web of relations, meanings, and stories carried by water.
On the other, in a time witnessing increasing ecocides, displacements, and an ongoing genocide, Tears of Fog also works as an echoing chamber and as a space of material solidarity for the people of Palestine. In this respect, while the contributions to the exhibition do not necessarily focus on Palestine itself, the revenues from possible artworks sold in the exhibition will be in part donated to Owneh, an initiative of 30 Palestinian civil society organizations seeking to break away from the colonial funding system and supporting independence for Palestinian cultural projects and spaces to continue their community work.
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