Slow Burning Without Feeling

This work was created in response to poetic texts written by Habibah Sheikh, a nomadic performance artist originally from Lebanon, and the curator of the Mitli Mitlak exhibition. In the text, a character named Ruba experiences the destruction of war first hand and becomes a refugee in the process. The use of imagery and of violence evokes the emotional and physical vulnerability of certain Mediterranean themes...such as being without asylum.

Act 1, Scene 3, Mitli Mitlak (Like You, Like Me):

Exodos
“I see a group of refugees walking through mountains.
They ran away from their homes. They watched their families die of chemical weapons.
One step at a time. Each step... a victory. Some have fallen. It’s getting late. They cant bury
their dead. They still have the ashes of the bombs in their sweat...in their eyes..in their hair...
The wind is blowing hard... it's getting cold. 4 o’clock in the morning when they arrive to Damascus.
They’re hungry. They’re thirsty. It’s raining...going to the border of Lebanon...before dawn.”

Darweish’s work is concerned with the changing perceptions related to the continuous social metamorphosis that Egypt has experienced as an African, Arab, and Middle Eastern country. He explores issues of colonization and liberation and the contemporary constraints of time, diaspora, gender, and identity.