Protest slogans from Libya - an exhibition by Tewa Barnosa

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Libyan Artist’s first UK solo exhibition for Dreamy Place Festival 2024 Using video, VR, projection and a whole new colour for the walls of Gallery Lock In, Libyan artist Tewa Barnosa transforms the space into an audio visual gateway to create a meeting of cities and a meeting of minds.

Written to Not Remain will take audiences on a journey through the meaning of language, from translation to misinformation, shared heritage, and the constructed political situations that drive us apart.

Written to Not Remain is a visual investigation into the act of writing on walls across Libya. Each statement acts as temporary evidence of a story, an event, a piece of social commentary, or often a protest.

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Serving as a testimony of what cannot be publicly declared, these words are engraved on society’s tongues and in our collective memories as subtle and whispered dialogues, reflecting the state of the world through the manufactured wars in Libya.

Protest slogans from LibyaProtest slogans from Libya
Protest slogans from Libya

Many of these statements refuse the normalisation of everyday violence and death. Some are proclamations of prevailing dark dystopias or alarming realities in direct reference to previous frontlines and battlefields, and some carry the surreal irony of the times.

Barnosa’s work questions the notion of world building in these social gestures and what this means for their futures in a digitalised reality. She observes resilience and confirmation of the fact that humans will continue writing and engraving the evidence of their era on physical and digital surfaces alike. Selecting and elaborating on happenings from over 200 images of slogans, graffiti and wall tags she fuses original source materials, with her own narration and text recitation.

Tewa Barnosa (b.1998) is a trans-disciplinary artist and cultural producer born in Tripoli and currently based in Amsterdam. In 2015, she initiated the WaraQ an art space focusing on collaborative processes such as exhibition projects, publishing, space-making, and public interventions to facilitate nomadic infrastructures of co-creation and conversations.

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Barnosa is currently a post-grad Sonology student at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague (2024-2025), an alumnus of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (2021-2023), a recipient of the Iwaelwahaus African Artist Award (2021), and previously held the Berlin-based fellowship for artists at risk organised by the Martin Roth initiative (2019-2020).

Street slogans in LibyaStreet slogans in Libya
Street slogans in Libya

The exhibition will be held at Gallery Lock In, Little Western Street, BN1 2PU and entry is free.

Wednesday 23rd October • 7pm – 10pm (Opening Night)

Thursday 24th October • 4pm – 8pm

Friday 25th October • 4pm – 8pm

Saturday 26th October • 12pm – 4pm

Sunday 27th October • 12pm – 4pm

Tewa Barnosa’s new work has been commissioned by Gallery Lock In for Dreamy Place 2024. It is part of an ongoing project exploring the collaborative process between international artists and curators working to discover what we can achieve when we aren’t sharing the same physical spaces. Without travel and with low environmental impact, we will use ideas to build bridges between us.

Gallery Lock In was set up as a platform for artists working in durational performance to open up a critical debate with their live and non-live audiences; its main curatorial focus is the social, psychological and physical boundaries of the body and mind.

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Since 2016, it has a permanent space and hosts socially engaged visual art exhibitions. The Gallery supports emerging and mid-career artists, as well as giving a platform to international artists and those who are excluded from the mainstream and market-driven arts. As a non-profit space, it focuses on works that are temporal including performance, installation and video, as well as providing residency and workshop space for local artists.

Building on the legacy of Brighton Digital Festival, Dreamy Place is committed to fostering artistic expression through innovative technologies and moving image. The festival serves as a dynamic platform for regional and international talents, offering a stage to showcase the finest in contemporary creative arts.

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