Ashkal Alwan announces the 9^th edition of Home Works: A Forum on Cultural Practices taking place in Beirut between November 2023 and October 2024. This edition will gradually unfold into two chapters at Ashkal Alwan, the Arab Image Foundation, Beirut Art Center, Madina theater, Metro Al Madina, the Sunflower theater, and the Sursock Museum.

Ashkal Alwan's flagship forum features group exhibitions, artist projects, and commissions; talks, panels, and readings; music, dance, and theater performances; film and video screenings; and publications, and has consistently taken place in Beirut since 2002 in spite of perpetual instability.

The 8^th edition of Home Works opened, not auspiciously, in Beirut on the first evening of what became the October 2019 uprising. The following day, it was indefinitely postponed. Today, Palestine has entered an extremely dark cycle of violence and bloodshed, which Lebanon is not immune to, forcing us to consider how to confront an unbearable present and bleak future. We are convinced that Home Works remains of vital importance to our many communities and critical discourse, especially in resisting the rise of fear-mongering and the unfolding institutional moral crises.

We will be opening on November 30^th Intimate Garden Scene (in Beirut) at the Sursock Museum, an exhibition that revisits forms of critical artmaking in Lebanon from the 1990s onward. The title is a reference to Ashkal Alwan’s inaugural project, at Sanayeh Garden, Beirut (1995). The exhibition draws on lived experiences and acts of writing a subjective history and prompts us to consider what it means to tend to Lebanon’s recent woes from the vantage point of everyday life. An accompanying film program will run bi-weekly starting in January 2024.

On December 1^st, Jack, a solo exhibition by Simone Fattal opens at Ashkal Alwan, featuring an intimate collection of drawings produced in 1971, presented for the first time. The works muse over a nightly encounter between Fattal, her friends, and a band of young musicians passing through Lebanon on their way to India.

The second and final chapter of Home Works 9 will open in the first week of October 2024 in Beirut.

Intimate Garden Scene (in Beirut) features works by Mohamad Abdouni, Bassel Abi-Chahine, Ziad Abillama, Etel Adnan, Haig Aivazian, Tamara Al-Samerraei, Mounira Al Solh, Omar Amiralay, Ziad Antar, Marwa Arsanios, Vartan Avakian, Monica Basbous and Charbel Alkhoury, Tony Chakar, Ali Cherri, Roy Dib, Fouad Elkoury, Simone Fattal, Sirine Fattouh, Raymond Gemayel, Daniele Genadry, Laure Ghorayeb, Ahmad Ghossein, Zakaria Jaber, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Gilbert Hage, Charbel-joseph H. Boutros, Ghassan Halwani, Hatem Imam, Amal Issa, Lamia Joreige, Rim El Jundi,  Bassam Kahwaji, Mazen Kerbaj, Samir Khaddaje, Dalia Khamissy, Nesrine Khodr, Lina Majdalanie (Saneh), Raafat Majzoub, Alaa Mansour, Omar Mismar, Rabih Mroué, Hussein Nassereddine, Rawane Nassif, Nour Ouayda, Walid Raad, Kirsten Scheid and Salwa Raouda Choucair (in absentia), Marwan Rechmaoui, Renoz, Bassem Saad, Stéphanie Saadé, Walid Sadek, Ghassan Salhab, Jayce Salloum, Rasha Salti, Roy Samaha, Hala Schoukair, Nada Sehnaoui, Corine Shawi, Mohamed Soueid, Rania Stephan, Rayyane Tabet, Jalal Toufic, Karine Wehbé, Paola Yacoub, Raed Yassin, Shawki Youssef, and Akram Zaatari.

Intimate Garden Scene (in Beirut) will run at the Sursock Museum from 10am to 6pm, Wednesday to Sunday.

Jack will run at Ashkal Alwan from 12pm to 6pm, Monday to Friday.