“Tania El Khoury’s Cultural Exchange Rate: A Unique Performance at Galway University’s Aula Maxima
★★★★☆
Despite the rather uninspiring name, Tania El Khoury’s live art installation, hosted at the arts festival, oozes charm and a sense of novelty that draws you into the artist’s world.
The setting, Aula Maxima, is dimly lit, presenting an array of safety deposit-style boxes reminiscent of locked curiosities, with each compartment holding a piece of a puzzle or an unsolved enigma.
During the installation, visitors are given a large set of keys and invited to unravel a unique story told through 10 different numbered boxes. Each box tells a part of the Lebanese artist’s story, based on its size, position, contents and scent. With a head poked through black curtains, visitors get to delve into El Khoury’s world, exploring the props, documents, recordings or grainy videos hidden inside these boxes. While the entire exhibition concludes within an hour, it is a task that involves dedicating a few moments to each box before moving on.
The artist’s narrative, seen in small parts in each box, is tied to her own family, rooted in the villages along the Lebanon-Syria border. Pieces of her family history unwind—tales of great-grandparents who relocated to Mexico and eventually returned, her quest for her great-grandfather’s records in Mexico, a grandmother who braved wars and migration, a discovery of forgotten kin in Mexico City, the endeavour to obtain dual nationality, and the family’s penchant for hoarding obsolete Lebanese money.
The narrative also offers a glimpse into the future, showing El Khoury’s daughter, caught in a state of non-nationality: half Palestinian and half Lebanese, yet officially neither due to Palestine’s absence of sovereignty and Lebanon’s unwilling stance to defy its deeply rooted patriarchal norms.
This installation, while telling a unique tale of a single family’s path, quirks and mysteries, also highlights a larger, globally relevant narrative. Beautifully and thoughtfully constructed, it offers festival-goers a personal, intimate and ultimately captivating journey.
Running daily as a highlight of the Galway International Arts Festival, Cultural Exchange Rate, will continue to enthral visitors until Sunday, July 28th.”