Act III: Love (or what if this is love?)
Maissa Alameddine

Gallery 2
Roomsheet

Act III: Love (or what if this is love?) embodies the inheritance and transference of knowledge through an ancestral plant that requires both community and family to nurture. Maissa Alameddine has been engaging with her overgrown and neglected areeshi (grapevine) since the first covid lockdown in 2020.

This deep engagement has led her to question the layers of isolation experienced through living in Diaspora, resulting in the creation of a body of work constructed in three acts.

Act III: Love (or what if this is love?) follows previous acts investigating the burden of ties to heritage and cultural practice, as well as inheritance and transference in the Diaspora. Alameddine carries out an intuitive enquiry into the areeshi by documenting a series of communal gatherings among her community through photography, sound and video. Her findings reasserts the profound ties between cultural practice, the value of storytelling and the need to transfer this heritage to each other and the next generation. This work embodies love of community, family and cultural practice, a love that prevails each time the plant is harvested. It presents a deep desire to practice with communities and to be present in the love of sharing stories, food, music, to gather and harvest.

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