Sunday, March 3, 6PM
Pieter Performance Space:
2701 N Broadway, LA, CA 90031
Donations at the door
Masks encouraged

We’re very excited for a special evening of performance and political engagement in support of Palestinian liberation. Featuring Randa Jarrar, Deena Falconetti, Vanessa Dahbour, Lara Salmon, Amitis Motevalli, Zeina Baltagi, and hosted by Mandy Harris Williams. Donations will be collected at the door! If you have accessibility needs or signed up but won’t be able to make it, please email us at [email protected] and let us know!

The Pieter space is located on the 2nd floor, up one flight of stairs or via a password-protected elevator. The dance studio and restrooms are free of steps and other mobility barriers. Please note that there are no automated doors in the building.

RSVP

About the Artists

Randa Jarrar (@rajarrar) is the author of the memoir Love Is An Ex-Country, the novel A Map of Home, and the collection of stories Him, Me, Muhammad Ali. She is a filmmaker and actor who has appeared in independent films and on the A24 TV shows Ramy and #1 Happy Family USA. She is a recipient of a Creative Capital Award, an American Book Award, and others. She lives in Los Angeles. 

 

 

 

 

Lara Salmon (@ms.larasaur) is a performance artist whose work addresses the experience of chronic pain. Having lived in pain for most of her life, the fight to retain mobility finds expression in the extremity and duration of her work. In parallel to her art practice Lara has lived and worked in the Middle East, where she studied Arabic, collaborated in refugee assistance efforts, and became directly aware of the plight of Palestine. Lara has had nine solo and over thirty group exhibitions in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. Lara was awarded the Grand Prix of the 2021 Larnaca Biennale in Cyprus. Her work has been reviewed in publications such as The Invisible Archive, Alpha News, and the Los Angeles Daily News. 

 

Vanessa Dahbour (@foryourviewingpleasure) is a Palestinian and Indigenous American designer and organizer. Alongside her partner Lara Salmon, Vanessa is the co-founder and creative director of the brand For Your Viewing Pleasure (FYVP). Their mission is to use apparel as a platform to speak about Palestinian Liberation, refugee rights and LGBTQ+ equality while raising money for humanitarian aid. Through the brand Vanessa is devoted to creating a circular MENA/indigenous economy and providing spaces for the community to gather both in mourning and in joy. She lives in Los Angeles, and is not a performance artist.

 

Deena Falconetti (@DeenaOH) is a Palestinian American multidisciplinary performing artist and poet interested in the intersections. As a classically trained singers, word lover and Alexander Technique Teacher (movement + posture), Deena seeks to bring mind, body, breath and words together. Her debut vocal performance in 2003 for The New Music Coop in Austin Texas landed her a voice over part as Wonder Girl in the DC Universe Game. Currently, she’s also the Creative Director of Events and Theatre at Rita House and working on two movies (one is set in Palestine). Her last performance “The Meeting of 1,000 Gates” was featured at The Montalban Theatre for “We Choose Art | A Feminist Perspective” curated by Baha Danes. “Diaspora: Despair & Desire” is a movement and voice piece dealing with grief, our sense of belonging and faith in liberation. 

 

 

Amitis Motevalli (@amigeddon) is an artist who explores the cultural resistance and survival of people living in poverty, conflict and/or war. Her experiences as a trans-national migrant and community organizing are foundational in her work and research. Through many media, digital, analog, static and live, her work juxtaposes and contrasts iconography with iconoclasm, memorials with monuments, archive methodologies with canon. Her work intends to ask questions about archiving, documentation and canonization of histories, in particular related to violence. In this line of questioning she subverts populism by invoking the significance of a secular grassroots struggle. She is primarily based in Los Angeles, exhibiting art internationally as well as organizing to create an active and critical cultural discourse through information exchange, either in art, pedagogy with cultural producers and educators. 

 

 

Zeina Baltagi she/her (@zeina_baltagi) is an artist, educator and organizer raised between California and Lebanon. Her work reveals intimate transformations in relation to lived experiences with physical, emotional, economic and cultural mobility.