Visible Storytelling: The Living Room by Sandi Hilal
Sandi Hilal and curator Carolina Lio talk about The Living Room project dedicated to the sociopolitical meaning of hospitality.
Building on her long experience working in Palestinian refugee camps, and with Syrian refugees in Sweden, Hilal advocates for the right of displaced people to be a host and not to behave as eternal guests.
The project was inspired by a Syrian refugee couple who had moved to Boden but continued what was an essential part of their life back home, opening up their living room to host the local community. Reflecting on this story, in 2018, Sandi Hilal opened the Al Madhafah/The Living Room, an apartment transformed into a room for collective activities in the Yellow House, an asylum accommodation in Boden.
A semi-permanent Living Room is also active at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, while temporary versions of the projects have been hosted at ArkDes and IASPIS in Stockholm, Fawwar Refugee Camp in Palestine, the NYU Campus in Abu Dhabi, and the Swedish Institute in Paris. The networks of various living rooms interact, inspire, and contribute to each other.
Visible Storytelling is a project by Visible (Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto and Fondazione Zegna) curated by Carolina Lio. It aims to narrate some of the stories behind the projects in the Visible Archive, a platform that researches, produces and connects long-term socially engaged art projects, working with artists dealing with the urgencies of our times.
Visible Storytelling's videos are produced by Looking Forward. Looking Forward also curated the social media campaign associated with the project on Visible Instagram.