SCREENING & CONVERSATION
COMMUNE: Nora Adwan and Jumana Manna

PROGRAMME

5–6pm
Screening of Foragers by Jumana Manna
UKS, workshop room
Tickets are free, but spaces are limited – book here

On view throughout the event
Shifting Inheritance by Nora Adwan
UKS, exhibition space
Free and open to all

6.30–7.30pm
Conversation
Nora Adwan, Jumana Manna and Line Khateeb
UKS, exhibition space
Free and open to all (up to max. capacity)

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Thursday 30 November marks the launch of UKS’ new event series COMMUNE, its name and logo borrowed from a contribution by British artist Tai Shani for UKS’ 100th-anniversary exhibition, which circled around conviviality and struggle, disagreement and discourse. COMMUNE invites local and international agents from the arts and cultural spheres to set UKS in motion – both artistically and socially – engaging a wider community in the moulding of our new spaces in Keysers gate 1.

For the first iteration, UKS has invited artists Nora Adwan and Jumana Manna to display one work each – both dealing with questions central to the current and historic occupation of Palestine and displacement of its people, and the perpetual violence on and dehumanisation of Palestinian lives. With intelligence and humour, Manna’s film Foragers (2022) focuses on Palestinian foraging traditions and the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these. While Manna’s film captures politics contributing to the alienation of Palestinians from their land, Adwan’s video work Shifting Inheritance (2020) is rooted in the experience of exile. Examining how the trauma of refugees is continued in their children born in the West, Adwan poetically represents intergenerational translation and transmission of trauma and memory, language and culture.

At 6.30pm, the two artists will be in conversation with Line Khateeb, Director of The Palestine Committee of Norway. Khateeb will give a brief presentation of the historical background of the horrific events currently unfolding in Palestine, before the three turn to questions around art and artistic freedom in this context.

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FUNDRAISER

In conjunction with the event, UKS has teamed up with Ramallah-based not-for-profit organisation the A.M. Qattan Foundation, a key funding institution that supports the Palestinian cultural field in general, and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in particular. The event at UKS is free and open to all, but we encourage those who can, to give a donation to the A.M. Qattan Foundation. This can be done before and during the event through ‘Vipps’ directly to UKS (details below). UKS will handle the individual donations and transfer the full amount to the A.M. Qattan Foundation.

UKS’ Vipps number: 101259
Mark the donation (of any amount) with: Qattan

UKS issued a statement on the situation in Palestine on 18. October 2023, and has followed up with a variety of resources here.

* Image above: Installation view of Nora Adwan, Defragmentation at Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen (2022). Photo by Hordaland Kunstsenter.