Arts Lab 6.0: Rahaf Ghanam - Month 2
What can I say? 😅
This month has literally been full of work and activities. We have accomplished a lot.
We started with the French night, organized by our friends Ella and Savane from France. We enjoyed delicious French dishes of cold meats, various kinds of cheese, omelets, and the tasty grenadine drink. We did many activities and games, laughed, and had so much fun. It was truly an unforgettable night.
Then, we visited the cultural house in Târgu Frumos. As we conducted workshops for children where I collaborated with my friend Yasser to do a play about the folk tale "A beautiful girl from Târgu Frumos" with the children. I also sang the song "Made in Romania" with a lovely Romanian girl on stage. It was a pleasant day, full of energy, colors, balloons, and cotton candy. 🤍
And the most important, we completed the exhibitions for the first alternative museum, JEMOM. We opened our first exhibition at ACT House in Târgu Frumos, attended by several guests from the area. We showcased our artworks, ranging from painting and visual arts to sculpture and performance arts, including singing and theater.
In Iaşi, we held our second exhibition for JEMOM, attended by many more guests at the local museum there. The event started with a historical conference, followed by the architectural competition for the development of the Jewish cemetery in Târgu Frumos, in which I participated with a landscape design. And we concluded by showcasing our artworks.
We also did a caravan in Bacău, where we facilitated art workshops for high school students and showcased our works.
For this alternative museum, I composed and performed the song "Heavy Hearts," which carries a general theme about peaceful and happy lives before they turned into ruin and misery due to massacres, genocide, and wars, specifically mentioning the Death Train event. I also performed a cover song including both English song (I won't light a candle yet for you) and the Romanian song (Neuitare) by Paula Selling from the Schindler's List movie soundtrack.
This month also, my friend Ella and I traveled to Bucharest to attend the Jewish Film Festival. Several films related to Jews and the Holocaust were screened, including a French-directed film and others in Hebrew. There was also a music concert by several musicians and a singer. We tried to speak with some attendees and showed them our JEMOM Museum catalog, taking feedback, opinions, gaining some contacts.
I was astonished by how beautiful and vast Bucharest is. We saw the Parliament building, which is the heaviest building in the world. I was impressed by the urban planning and landscaping of Bucharest. We visited several cafes, and enjoyed Halloween vibes, it was an enjoyable and beautiful visit. I hope it repeats again.
Lastly, I hosted the "Syrian Night." As I traveled to Iaşi the day before to get the Syrian ingredients and started preparing the next day. As I prepared several Syrian dishes: Syrian Shawarma, Teskeyyeh fatteh, Fattoush salad, and Konafeh dessert. The next segment was preparing Yerba Maté drink I mentioned in my previous report 😅. We drank it with Syrian folk traditions, played the famous "Mafia" game, laughed and had a lot of fun. Then, we had a Q&A segment about Syria, and I sang some traditional Syrian songs. We concluded with the Syrian Dabkeh dance, where I taught my friends this traditional dance, and we danced for several hours. It was a special and beautiful night. I hope I left a remarkable Syrian imprint through it.
Currently, we have started working on the art residencies for the MAF Museum at the high school of technology. Tomorrow, we will attend an art festival we were invited to at the same school. We will have a vernissage for the JEMOM Museum at Moldova High School in the evening.
That was everything for this report. See you in a new report next month. ♥️
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