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Haa Guumoben Waaliga (May You Never Be Disgraced): Dual Exhibition by Hana Mire and Samia Osman

June 11, 2021 @ 5:00 pm June 20, 2021 @ 6:00 pm UTC-5

39-31 29th St, Long Island City NY
Gallery dates*
Friday, June 11, 5 – 8pm
Saturday & Sunday, June 12 & 13, 1 –  6pm
Thursday & Friday, June 17 & 18, 3 – 8pm

Saturday & Sunday, June 19 & 20, 1 – 6pm

*Masks are required inside the gallery.

Opening Reception
Friday, June 11, 5 – 8pm
In the Windmill Community Garden
RSVP Here Join Hana and Samia in the garden and enjoy some tastes of Somalia by Safari Restaurant. They will be serving Shaax, Sambusa, Bur Mandazi, Buskud. With traditional music by Somali-American harpist Iliana Hagenah.
Artist Talk with Hana & Samia
Thursday, June 17, 6pm ET
RSVP Here
Hana and Samia will show their work and discuss their collaborative practice.
Haa Guumoben Waaliga (May You Never Be Disgraced)

Hana Mire in collaboration with Samia Osman will premiere an experimental short film and showcase selected documentary photography work made in Mogadishu, Somalia ( locally known as Xamar). Some of these images were previously displayed in Mogadishu during the Somali Arts Foundation (SAF) contemporary photography exhibit titled Still Life ( Oct. 2020).

Centered on video and photography, Haa Guumoben Waaliga is an exhibition that explores the passage of time through the everyday contemporary life of  Mogadishu residents before and after the civil war.

As artists of the Somali diaspora raised in the United Arab Emirates, we’ve understood our culture through oral stories from our parents, theater, literature, music, poetry and folktales. Longing to experience the motherland ourselves, we traveled to witness firsthand the magical memories and complicated history our parents kept stored in their hearts. Included in our showcase are still and moving images captured by us throughout the years woven with archival sourced from friends and family.

Haa Guumoben Waaliga aims to offer a time portal to familiar landscapes and sounds in hopes to contribute towards intergenerational conversations about Somali identity at home and in the diaspora today. The sequence of images is a love letter to the people of Mogadishu that are so often stripped of their humanity in Western images. Our exhibition honors their resilience, dignity, and beauty.

We are not less human— despite the instability, we remain steadfast in faith and joy.

– Hana and Samia

Artist Bios

Somali independent filmmaker Hana Mire studied at the New York Film Academy in Abu Dhabi. Her short documentary SILENT ART was awarded a prize at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, and she has worked with Abu Dhabi National TV and twofour54 Abu Dhabi Free zone Media. She is a fellow of the Chicken and Egg Diversity Initiative & Accelerator Lab and has been selected to attend the Greenhouse Development Lab. Hana was an Artist in residency at Flux Factory she is currently directing and producing her first feature-length documentary, which has already received support from Chicken & Egg Pictures, Bertha Foundation, Sundance Documentary Institute, HotDocs Pitching form, Durban FilmMart, and The Harnisch Foundation. She’s currently an artist resident in Jacob Burns film center.

 

Samia Osman is a Somali Filmmaker who studied Filmmaking at the New York Film Academy in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Her short film JUST ANOTHER ACCENT premiered in Cannes Film Festival short film corner, and Internationally screened across Europe and the Middle East. She was mentored by the Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr at the International Filmmaking Academy in Bologna, Italy. Samia is currently developing her feature documentary film in Dhagaxbuur in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. And In the production phase directing a documentary Series about The Afro Arab Experience in the Middle East.

Opening Reception Musician

Iliana Hagenah is a Somali-American harpist based in New York City. For over 20 years, she has played recitals and events. She was a member of The George Washington University orchestra, where she played concert halls. She attended the Longy School of Music where she was trained with principal harpist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Elizabeth Morse. Off season, she experiments with scales and cultural sounds to bring a richer and varied understanding of the harp to her audiences.

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