At the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Amsterdam/Berg en Dal/Leiden Lina Issa is invited to do a residency in two phases.
The first phase of Lina Issa's residency will be focused on working with the 11 members of the management team on the subject of developing cultural sensitivity. The second phase will start in September 2016 and ends in April 2017 at the opening of the new Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. This phase will focus on exploring possible relationships between the museum, its staff and collection, and its surrounding neighborhood which is mainly inhabited by migrants.
The project of Lina Issa coincides with the museums own attempt to refashion its role within contemporary Dutch society. With a new mission ‘to foster in every visitor feelings of belonging, as world citizens, this project is intended to inspire every member of staff of the museum to reflect on themselves in relation to the world they share with others, thus putting themselves in the lives of those they attempt to represent.
About Lina Issa
Lina Issa is a Lebanese artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. A graduate of the Graphic Design Program at the American University of Beirut (2002) Lina left Lebanon for a postgraduate research fellowship in Fine Arts at the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht (2003-2005). She then earned a Master in Visual Arts from the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam (2006). Since then she has worked, individually and in collaboration with others, in a range of media, to explore tensions between the personal and the universal. Issa’s work revolves around issues of place, otherness, embodied memory & the performativity of (cultural) identity. Using ideas of physical displacement, Lina puts herself in situations that create the conditions for the unfolding of new relationships and encounters, and real and imagined narratives.
In her work, Lina questions the ways we construct and (re)enact our subjectivities. The process takes the form of a social event- a performance or a happening. The artwork carries a tension between the personal & the universal & takes different forms like: performance, video, photos or text. Her projects include: Where we are not| Performance, Amsterdam, Beirut, Paris, London (2006-2009), Resonant Bodies, Voices, Memories | Publication and video screenings, Rotterdam (2008), What if, if I take your place?| Performance, Stockholm, Amsterdam (2010-ongoing), Tug of War | Happening, Kiruna, Sweden (2011), How? Different! On cultural diversity and empathy in organizations|Several Interventions at Van Doorne Law firm & VUmc/ medical university, Amsterdam, (2011-ongoing). www.linaissa.com
WHEN: Two phases, first phase starting in 12/2015Organized by: Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen (NL)
