The Memory in Our Bones

Green Art Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition The Memory in Our Bones, featuring works by Majd Abdel Hamid, Nasser Al Zayani and Gülşah Mursaloğlu, opening 18 May.

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Oftentimes, memories live on in parts of our body that we don’t necessarily think about when we think of sadness. We classify them as side effects; responses to lived experiences and trauma; conditions to fix.

a patch of skin that becomes shiny and scaly, like that of a fish, flaking away in small grey chips

an ankle that clackity-clacks with every step taken; like a musical tempo, reliable, always there

ears that can’t hear much anymore but cannot seem to shut out the ringing in the head

a scar in topographic relief, where the skin healed unevenly over sutures and pulls sometimes

Like clockwork, we are told: walk it off, stretch it out, submerge it in heat, nourish it with that which we aren’t already consuming. Take care of it and the condition will go away. But should we try to send it away, or could we instead massage it into our bones so that we can live with it?

- excerpt from text by Saira Ansari