A DREAM THAT CAME TRUE?

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Series of video works and installations

Migration, everyday life, challenges, resistance, collective imaginative future

A ongoing long-term artistic work and research

For the video links contact the artist 

 

A Dream That Came True? is an ongoing long-term artistic project and research (since 2016) with the multiform media productions resulting from various types of methodologies. The project brings together personal narrations related to subjects of everyday life, home, migration, hybrid identity of women and girls who live in Finland and have also South West Asian and North African roots (the politically known as Middle East). Project intends to challenge the preconceived stereotypical perceptions of the SWANA women and their gender and cultural (and other) roles in Finland. Going beyond by resisting against the accepted norms and conventions related to women with SWANA roots in Western societies, privileging their perspectives over the other ones avoiding them from being an only side-track in the narratives. The project questions migration as a dream from perspective of the migrant women, with an aim to reflect on their lived experiences, different ways of being, socio-cultural adaptions, resistances and finally struggles which one might face in society, offering different narratives than existing ones, and ambitiously attempting in finding ways to tackle these struggles for a better living conditions. The project is a collaborative work and is done in collaboration with the participants.

 

As it is reflected in the title of the project with a question mark whose dream is/has been to migrate? From whose perspective migration is a dream? What about second and third generation of migrants?

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Artist endeavours to create space for dialogue in the society regarding the critical issues, to provoke and to intervene, by exploring the possibilities of going beyond the boundaries which are caused by one's own culture, or sociopolitical structures and norms of the place where one lives. This project reflects on lives of people who cross the borders between the traditional and postmodern type of life, related and beyond the culture: “ Space, Identity and the politics of difference”. The result is a non-linear approach to the issues and will be a complex embodiment and expression through  media art. This project is part of Rahaa's current doctoral dissertation work.

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In this process questions to consider are: How women and their beings (their representation) are politicised in the society and in contemporary art? How much one needs to compromise to be part of the society? How much one resists and in what forms? After all compromises made will one become part of the society or the struggle will continue? What is the role of contemporary art in addressing complex and difficult subjects in society and what methods it employs to address/represent concepts such as gender/cultural identity? How to address and tackle stereotypical, discriminative and problematic representations or perceptions by means of contemporary art and its narratives in public place? Whose voice is being heard in society and through contemporary art practices and its representations? by whom and how?

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