Creative Statement
I have been immersed over the past twenty years in exploring the Arab/SWANA (Southwest Asian & North African) cultural diaspora in relation to my Lebanese heritage and since 2018, facilitating the Cedar Tree Project platform to amplify other Arab/SWANA contemporary artists, I have been recently drawn to the metaphorical and poetic aspects of the word as well. What if diaspora is also a scattering and spreading of an idea, an emotion, a memory? What might be released and transformed in that release? What could be radically re-imagined from a new perspective? Art of this moment….a perpetual state of motion, becoming and unbecoming. Art of urgency, of living now? The opposite or counterpoint of scattering might be an eventual gathering, concentrating, and arriving of what’s been sown, now transformed.
This line of creative inquiry is inspired, in part, by Edward Said, Palestinian American author, professor, and literary critic. He wrote that a state of being in diaspora or exile, whether imposed or chosen, could be a rich perspective to challenge privilege and power in society. (The Selected Works of Edward Said 1966-2006, and the Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora, https://intellectualdiaspora.org)
As a related counterpoint, Lebanese American poet/painter Etel Adnan, from her book Shifting the Silence (2020): “The Universe makes a sound, is a sound. In the core of this sound there’s a silence…This silence is preparation of things to come.” Said utilized the musical term “counterpoint” as “a form of literary interpretation that emphasized that what isn’t said may very well be as important as what is said.” ( Preface to The Selected Works of Edward Said 1966-2006, by his wife, Mariam C. Said).
For me Motion State is this preparation of things to come in the silence space, in what’s not said because we don’t have the vocabulary yet but we see a new potential. Motion State will embody a various forms of expression and community engagement to support opening up to new perspectives. An invitation for myself and others to try out new vantage points from our valuable hybrid insider/outsider status that we all share to some extent. To truly see and listen to the world directly around us, not what we’re being told.. How to engage with the future now instead of dreaming and waiting. Future actions now.
May we all be in diaspora, ready to leave our familiar homes and journey to new places. New futures.
~Sharon
I have been immersed over the past twenty years in exploring the Arab/SWANA (Southwest Asian & North African) cultural diaspora in relation to my Lebanese heritage and since 2018, facilitating the Cedar Tree Project platform to amplify other Arab/SWANA contemporary artists, I have been recently drawn to the metaphorical and poetic aspects of the word as well. What if diaspora is also a scattering and spreading of an idea, an emotion, a memory? What might be released and transformed in that release? What could be radically re-imagined from a new perspective? Art of this moment….a perpetual state of motion, becoming and unbecoming. Art of urgency, of living now? The opposite or counterpoint of scattering might be an eventual gathering, concentrating, and arriving of what’s been sown, now transformed.
This line of creative inquiry is inspired, in part, by Edward Said, Palestinian American author, professor, and literary critic. He wrote that a state of being in diaspora or exile, whether imposed or chosen, could be a rich perspective to challenge privilege and power in society. (The Selected Works of Edward Said 1966-2006, and the Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora, https://intellectualdiaspora.org)
As a related counterpoint, Lebanese American poet/painter Etel Adnan, from her book Shifting the Silence (2020): “The Universe makes a sound, is a sound. In the core of this sound there’s a silence…This silence is preparation of things to come.” Said utilized the musical term “counterpoint” as “a form of literary interpretation that emphasized that what isn’t said may very well be as important as what is said.” ( Preface to The Selected Works of Edward Said 1966-2006, by his wife, Mariam C. Said).
For me Motion State is this preparation of things to come in the silence space, in what’s not said because we don’t have the vocabulary yet but we see a new potential. Motion State will embody a various forms of expression and community engagement to support opening up to new perspectives. An invitation for myself and others to try out new vantage points from our valuable hybrid insider/outsider status that we all share to some extent. To truly see and listen to the world directly around us, not what we’re being told.. How to engage with the future now instead of dreaming and waiting. Future actions now.
May we all be in diaspora, ready to leave our familiar homes and journey to new places. New futures.
~Sharon
NeitherHEREnorTHERE
NeitherHEREnorTHERE is a short dance film created by Sharon Mansur and Lebanese American dance/film artist Meryl Murman. This film encapsulated 12 months of collaborative research throughout 2023, supported by a Forecast Public Art professional development grant. Mansur and Murman devised a long-distance creative pen-pal process from their respective homes in Winona, MN and Thessaloniki, Greece. They exchanged prompts and responses via writings, photos and videos, and also visited one another in person to further this conversation: The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, MI, Thessaloniki, Greece and Winona, MN.
Themes included Arab/SWANA-ness, diaspora, displacement, migration, home, and bodies of water in relation to our bodies in and as various landscapes. This film-in-progress premiered at the 2024 Frozen River Film Festival both in person and online during the Blurring Borders: Cinema & Home film set co-curated by Mizna' film curator Michelle Baroody and Mansur.
NeitherHEREnorTHERE was also shared at: Wayfinding: Creative Conversation & Dance Film Screening, June 2024, at the Winona Arts Center, presented by McKnight Dancer & Choreographer Fellowships program with The Cedar Tree Project, co-sponsored by Art of the Rural.
NeitherHEREnorTHERE is a short dance film created by Sharon Mansur and Lebanese American dance/film artist Meryl Murman. This film encapsulated 12 months of collaborative research throughout 2023, supported by a Forecast Public Art professional development grant. Mansur and Murman devised a long-distance creative pen-pal process from their respective homes in Winona, MN and Thessaloniki, Greece. They exchanged prompts and responses via writings, photos and videos, and also visited one another in person to further this conversation: The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, MI, Thessaloniki, Greece and Winona, MN.
Themes included Arab/SWANA-ness, diaspora, displacement, migration, home, and bodies of water in relation to our bodies in and as various landscapes. This film-in-progress premiered at the 2024 Frozen River Film Festival both in person and online during the Blurring Borders: Cinema & Home film set co-curated by Mizna' film curator Michelle Baroody and Mansur.
NeitherHEREnorTHERE was also shared at: Wayfinding: Creative Conversation & Dance Film Screening, June 2024, at the Winona Arts Center, presented by McKnight Dancer & Choreographer Fellowships program with The Cedar Tree Project, co-sponsored by Art of the Rural.
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Meryl Zaytoun Murman is a multi-disciplinary artist working with choreographic, cinematic, and live art practices to explore and disrupt popular notions of spectacle, the body, virtuosity and gender. She was the 2024 McKnight International Choreography Fellow in collaboration with Sharon Mansur and the Cedar Tree Project. As a facilitator she has twice received international fellowships through the US Embassy (in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Thessaloniki, Greece) to implement public art projects with female and LGBTQ+ refugee populations exploring sexuality, gender and migration through movement. She is currently in development on a feature film and multiple dance based collaborations. Sharon Mansur is a dance and interdisciplinary artist, curator, educator and community engager based in Winona, Mni Sota Makoce/MN, Dakota land. A facilitator of people, spaces and imagination, Sharon guides The Cedar Tree Project, creating, sharing and presenting Arab/SWANA contemporary art and artists. |
Blurring Borders: Cinema & Home
Frozen River Film Festival co-curated film series
This Blurring Borders: Cinema & Home film set was co-curated by Michelle Baroody and Sharon Mansur for the 2024 Frozen River Film Festival in Winona, MN, Dakota land.
Showcasing Arab and SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) artists and filmmakers, this set of short films challenges documentary form as well as common narratives/images of immigrations and displacement. The makers featured in this segment use cinema to expand visibility both within and outside their ancestral homelands, interrogating the policies that enforce borders and mass displacement. The films in this program depict home, place, identity, and belonging, as well as loss, scattering, and letting go, and in addition to challenging the arbitrary lines on maps, they challenge the boundaries between documentary and narrative cinema and between reality and fiction.
Inviting participants and audience members to consider new ways of looking at home, immigration, and exile, this film program reflected on both past and present to consider a different future, one that can be found through art practice. A short discussion with Michelle, Sharon and Andrea followed the films.
Showcasing Arab and SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) artists and filmmakers, this set of short films challenges documentary form as well as common narratives/images of immigrations and displacement. The makers featured in this segment use cinema to expand visibility both within and outside their ancestral homelands, interrogating the policies that enforce borders and mass displacement. The films in this program depict home, place, identity, and belonging, as well as loss, scattering, and letting go, and in addition to challenging the arbitrary lines on maps, they challenge the boundaries between documentary and narrative cinema and between reality and fiction.
Inviting participants and audience members to consider new ways of looking at home, immigration, and exile, this film program reflected on both past and present to consider a different future, one that can be found through art practice. A short discussion with Michelle, Sharon and Andrea followed the films.
Blurring Borders featured films
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TETA NIJMEH & LAILA - Samar Saeed
This short film explores the bond between a grandmother, Teta, and her granddaughter, Laila, emphasizing the role that elders play in transmitting history, culture, and traditions to their grandchildren, shaping their identities. |
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KINGDOM OF STRANGERS - Randa Ali
Ali, a young Egyptian living in self-exile in Los Angeles is visited by a memory of an old friend. Together they try to make sense of a past haunted by trauma and a present that makes no sense. |
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ECHOLOCATION - Nadia Shihab
The rain in Oakland, my grandmother's home in Baghdad, my aunts' voices in What's App, my daugher learning to count to ten, my brother playing the darbuka, the cicadas in Texas, the walls of my studio, the search for new forms. |
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MEMORY'S CONSOLATION - Chadi Hazime
An exploration of the past and history of the Hilton Cinema in Al-Mreijeh district in Lebanon, long since closed and inactive. The theater stands as a silent witness to ongoing political and economic struggles. |
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NeitherHEREnorTHERE - Meryl Murman & Sharon Mansur
NeitherHEREnorTHERE is a choreo-essay film between Lebanese American artists Sharon Mansur and Meryl Zaytoun Murman. A collaboration amongst their bodies and the bodies of different waters they find themselves living in relation to over the course of one year, their video exchange examines the space between beliefs, identities, the human body and the more than human bodies on the landscapes they migrate amidst. |
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on bayt - Andrea Shaker
A film comprised of visual and textual fragments, on bayt explores memories as frozen, moving, and existing outside of time. The body is presented as a metaphor for home and movement as a metaphor for memory. The footage was captured in the filmmaker's ancestral Lebanese village, Ma'asser el Chouf. |
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45TH PARALLEL - Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Focusing on the Haskell Free Library and Opera House - a unique municipal site that straddles the jurisdications of Canada and the United States - "45th Parallel" recasts the border as at once powerful yet facile, absurd yet lethal. |
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Michelle BaroodyMichelle Baroody is an educator and a film curator, who currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Minnesota in 2019. She teaches film and literature classes at the Blake School in Minneapolis and is the curator of Mizna's Arab Film Festival, the Mizna Film Series, and the Tulsa Arab Film Festival. She is also co-founder of Archives on Screen, an organization dedicated to bringing archival films to Twin Cities venues, and a volunteer projectionist at the Trylon Cinema.
www.mizna.org |
Photo by Brian Segal
Sharon MansurSharon Mansur is a dance and interdisciplinary artist, curator, educator and community engager based in Winona, Mni Sota Makoce/MN, Dakota land. A facilitator of people, spaces and imagination, Sharon guides The Cedar Tree Project, creating, sharing and presenting Arab/SWANA contemporary art and artists.
www.mansurdance.com www.cedartreeproject.com |
Photo by Tommy O'Laughlin
Andrea ShakerAndrea Shaker (she/her) lives on Dakota and Anishinaabe lands. Shaker's creative work is interdisciplinary, spanning photography, moving image, experimental film, and written and spoken word. She is a professor of art at the College of St. Benedict | St. John's University. She currently lives with her family in Minnesota.
www.andreashaker.com |
Workshops
Sharon facilitated four thematically related Motion State workshops in Winona, MN between February-May 2024. These offerings invited others to consider their relationships to the broader idea of "diaspora" and what imaginative visions might emerge to enact a world that they and others will thrive in. The workshops were tailored to four different groups and included dance, creative writing, story telling, mini-film projects, interviews, nature walks, work-in-progress film screening discussions and more.
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Frozen River Film Festival Festival
Home/Place: Creating films about home, family & ancestry. A companion to the Blurring Borders film set, this workshop facilitated by Sharon Mansur invited adult FRFF participants to engage in a creative process to develop a short film study reflecting their sense of home, place and belonging as well as scattering and letting go. www.frff.org |
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Participant Quote:
“I learned more about film-making and how to use objects and images to tell our stories. Helped articulate things that are important about my identity and how it could be represented in this particular medium using physical objects as well as the spoken word.”
“I learned more about film-making and how to use objects and images to tell our stories. Helped articulate things that are important about my identity and how it could be represented in this particular medium using physical objects as well as the spoken word.”
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Project FINE
Kite Making/Identity Workshop at Winona Senior High School Sharon was a guest artist at Project FINE’s Safety and Prevention for Youth after-school program and guided students through a creative process to consider key aspects of their identity, design and draw that expression, then transform that art into a paper kite and fly them outside. www.projectfine.org |
“Thank you so much for being a part of our Safety and Prevention for Youth Program. Thank you for insight, thoughtfulness, knowledge and passion for art that you showed the kids through kite making. The kids enjoyed the evening and were able to learn many skills, including team building, making connections, self-identity, being present and of course how to make a kite! It was a fun evening and we are very appreciative of our partnership.” ~Fatima Said, Executive Director, Project FINE
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Our Voices
Home/Away from Home at Studio HALO Sharon worked with Our Voices to engage high school students in a creative process through dance, yoga, writing and drawing, to consider and express when and where do they feel less at home; and when, where and how do they feel they are at home: physically, emotionally, spiritually. www.facebook.com/OurVoicesWinona |
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“I found the workshop to be very beneficial for the students….it allowed the students to warm up their bodies while learning to breathe and be comfortable with their movements.”
~LaShara Morgan
~LaShara Morgan
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Winona Afghan Support Network Kite Making/Identity Workshop at the Winona Arts Center Sharon led a group of Afghan newcomers including children, teenagers and their parents, to design and construct paper kites that reflected a sense of connection to their home. www.winonashelter.org/wasn/ |
Direct anecdotal comments from the kids and adults:
Adults: 'Beautiful'. 'Good' (while doing a thumbs up)'
Kids: 'That was fun.' 'Let's go to the park and fly them.' 'I want to do more.'
“Kite flying has an important historical and cultural significance in Afghanistan and the kids never miss the chance to show off their skills since arriving in Minnesota. Busy with family responsibilities, school, and learning the ins and outs of life in Midwest America, that chance doesn't come as often as they'd like, however. The kite-making workshop offered the opportunity for the kids to have space and time to focus purely on something that brings them joy and to connect their present life in Minnesota to their past life in Afghanistan. Often with one foot in each world (as can be seen by the Afghan-themed designs they drew on their kites),
art and community offer a way to help bridge those worlds and make sense of often complex experiences
and feelings.”
~ Kathy Florin WASN coordinator/volunteer, workshop participant
Adults: 'Beautiful'. 'Good' (while doing a thumbs up)'
Kids: 'That was fun.' 'Let's go to the park and fly them.' 'I want to do more.'
“Kite flying has an important historical and cultural significance in Afghanistan and the kids never miss the chance to show off their skills since arriving in Minnesota. Busy with family responsibilities, school, and learning the ins and outs of life in Midwest America, that chance doesn't come as often as they'd like, however. The kite-making workshop offered the opportunity for the kids to have space and time to focus purely on something that brings them joy and to connect their present life in Minnesota to their past life in Afghanistan. Often with one foot in each world (as can be seen by the Afghan-themed designs they drew on their kites),
art and community offer a way to help bridge those worlds and make sense of often complex experiences
and feelings.”
~ Kathy Florin WASN coordinator/volunteer, workshop participant
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Sharon Mansur is a fiscal year 2023 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and culture fund.
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