Abounaddara: The Ruins We Carry

October 9, 2024–February 23, 2025

Part of BAMPFA’s Campus Collaborations series, Abounaddara: The Ruins We Carry is the collective’s first solo US museum exhibition. Known for its intimate portrayals of Syrian life amid upheaval, Abounaddara debuts a new three-channel film installation, The Imagemaker, exploring the world-making powers of one of the last craftsmen of stamped cloth in Damascus.

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Abounaddara: The Imagemaker, 2024 (installation view)
Abounaddara: The Imagemaker, 2024 (installation view)
Abounaddara: The Imagemaker, 2024 (installation view)

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Wednesday, October 9, 5:00 PM
First Look: Abounaddara: The Ruins We Carry

Get a first look at the new exhibition Abounaddara: The Ruins We Carry, the first solo US museum exhibition by Abounaddara, an anonymous collective of artists formed in Damascus, Syria. Stay for Abounaddara Shorts, a special screening and talk in celebration of the opening day.

BAMPFA

Past Films

Abounaddara Shorts
Wednesday, October 9 7:00 PM
Charif Kiwan, Stefania Pandolfo, and Anneka Lenssen in Conversation
Accompanying the opening of the exhibition Abounaddara: The Ruins We Carry, this program of shorts from the anonymous collective of Syrian filmmakers depicts people in dialogue with themselves and others amid the intimate revelations of a society undergoing transformation, revolution, and civil war.
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Abounaddara: The Ruins We Carry

Campus Collaborations

October 9, 2024–February 23, 2025

The Ruins We Carry is the first solo US museum exhibition by Abounaddara, an anonymous collective of artists based in Damascus, Syria. Best known for their unsettling portraits of everyday life during the Syrian Revolution and subsequent civil war, the members of the collective created and posted a short film to Vimeo every Friday between 2011 and 2017, as well as two acclaimed feature-length films. Their works capture intimate moments of questioning and transformation, opening a space of radical imagination and making perceptible a dimension of the invisible in the midst of upheaval and destruction. The Imagemaker (2024), a new three-channel film installation premiering in this exhibition, explores the world-making powers of a craftsman known as Abou Diab, the last practitioner of the art of stamped cloth in Damascus and a central figure in the history of the collective. Like a photographer in a darkroom, he labors in a dimly lit workshop, printing on fabrics using improvised, alchemical inks made from rotting, rusted matter. As Abou Diab transforms his cloth, Abounaddara considers the potential of the creative act to refashion ruins into life. Layering filmic fragments across time and space, The Ruins We Carry presents this new work in dialogue with a selection of Abounaddara’s short films, screened every weekend during the exhibition’s run in Theater 2 on the lower level.

Abounaddara: The Ruins We Carry is curated by Anneka Lenssen, Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art, UC Berkeley, and Stefania Pandolfo, Professor in the Department of Anthropology, UC Berkeley, with Margot Norton, BAMPFA Chief Curator, and Matthew Villar Miranda, BAMPFA Curatorial Associate.

The exhibition is part of BAMPFA’s Campus Collaborations, an ongoing series in partnership with faculty and students at UC Berkeley. This series brings exhibitions at BAMPFA into critical dialogue with the vibrant academic life at UC Berkeley.

This exhibition is made possible in part by a Mellon Project Grant provided by the Division of the Arts & Humanities Dean’s office.

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Abounaddara: The Ruins We Carry / Short Film Program

As part of the exhibition Abounaddara: The Ruins We Carry we will screen a program of short films on a continuous loop in Theater 2 every Saturday and Sunday throughout the day. Created by an anonymous collective of Syrian filmmakers, these shorts depict people engaged in efforts to live with their ruins amid turns of political oppression, revolution, and civil war. Made between 2010 and 2017, these films seek signs of radical possibility in the everyday, exploring the capacity of images to inspire new ways of living, perceiving, and imagining a possible common world.

The Mother and the Dogs (2010) 4:58 min.
Field of Battle (2017) 3:05 min.
The Lady of Syria—Part One (2014) 4:21 min.
Believers without Borders (2010) 4:43 min.
Blowing in the Wind (2012) 1:56 min.
The Day After (2015) 2:21 min.
The Smiters for Damascus (2010) 4:52 min.
Then What? (2011) 2:22 min.
Vanguards (2011) 1:11 min.
Rejoice in Raqqa (2016) 3:50 min.
The Battle of Aleppo (2016) 10:09 min.
Of God and Dogs (2014) 12:14 min.

Abounaddara: The Ruins We Carry

October 9, 2024–February 23, 2025

Past Events

First Look: Abounaddara: The Ruins We Carry

Past Films

Abounaddara Shorts