TIFF Lightbox
350 King St W, Toronto,
Gallery Atrium, (Lobby)
Palestinian Poppy, Jude Abu Zaineh, 2024. Neon mounted to painted metal frame. Image courtesy of artist.
The Stones Know Our Names
Jude Abu Zaineh
Opening Reception Wednesday, September 24, 6pm-7pm
Jude Abu Zaineh’s The Stones Know Our Names gathers archival fragments of Palestinian life into an unfolding conversation across time and space. Abu Zaineh sees the archive as a living witness of colonial violence that also holds strong traces of Palestinian selfhood and renewal. The archival materials she uses include recipes and photographs of plants, land, and people. Through acts of collecting, reframing, and layering, The Stones Know Our Names transforms these archival materials into an active participant in developing a renewed image of Palestine and its people’s collective identity. Abu Zaineh’s exhibition carries ancestral knowledge while simultaneously offering pathways into speculative futures.
Archival material remains inseparable from the land itself, where stones, soil, and everyday objects bear the imprints of generational colonial violence and genocide. The archives’ presence in this exhibition affirms a continued relation to Palestine’s history that invites new forms of imagining the multiplicity of its diverse existences. Abu Zaineh asks how an archive might operate as both a record and a seed.
Jude Abu Zaineh is a Palestinian-Canadian interdisciplinary artist-curator working across art, food, science, and technology studies. Her work develops counter-archive practices and investigates themes of culture, displacement, storytelling, diaspora, and belonging, through de-colonial and feminist perspectives. She examines ideals of home and community influenced by her childhood and upbringing in Southwest Asia.
Abu Zaineh is the recipient of several awards including, the 2020 William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Artists, and was one of the first selected artists to participate in a collaborative residency with the Ontario Science Centre and MOCA Toronto (Canada). She has presented her works at Ireland Glass Biennale; Malta Society of Arts, Valletta, Malta; Cultivamos Cultura, São Luis, Portugal; Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia, Lisbon, Portugal; Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico City, Mexico; SVA, NYC, USA; Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, USA; Forest City Gallery, London, Canada; Art Gallery of Windsor, Canada; Centre Culturel Canadien, Paris, France; Museum London, Canada; Museum of Glass, Washington, USA, and more.
Her work has been featured in VICE Arabia, PBS, NPR, across CBC Canada platforms, Canadian Artmagazine, NEUES GLAS-NEW GLASS: art & architecture magazines, and on the cover of fuse: the Museum of Glass Magazine.
Abu Zaineh's works can be found in the permanent collections of The Museum of Glass (USA), Art Windsor-Essex (Canada), The City of Windsor's Public Art Commission (Canada), as well as private collections internationally.
She received an MFA from the University of Windsor (Canada) and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (NY, USA), where she was an RPI Humanities, Arts, & Social SciencesFellow and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellow.
She maintains an active studio practice between upstate NY, USA and southern Ontario, Canada.
Generously Supported by Media City Film Festival
Co-presented by