Umama Hamido
Zarqaa al-Yamama
Exhibitions



Umama Hamido (b. 1987) in Lebanon currently based in London, is an artist and filmmaker. Her work addresses lived and shared experiences of immigration, as she questions our relation to traumatic spaces, how the formation of the self is affected by separation from homeland and the exile’s gaze.  

Umama Hamido has a BA in Theatre from the Lebanese University, and an MA in Performance from Goldsmiths University. She has presented her work at various galleries across the UK, including Turner Contemporary, Modern Art Oxford, Toynbee Studios, Mosaic Rooms, New Art Exchange, and at festivals including Otherfield Documentary Festival, SPILL Festival, Dublin Live Art Festival, Rencontres à l’Échelle Festival, and Arab Women Artist Now Festival. She also performs in collaborative projects of others and teaches and translates Arabic.


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Live Performance
London
2014
Duration 50’
In the summer of 2014 Umama Hamido travelled from her city Beirut to the Bekaa Valley, visiting villages on the borders of Lebanon and Syria. She was drawn by the beauty of the people and a way of life much removed from the one she was accustomed to in the capital city. This is a world of local tribes, rebel fighters, and people who have fled from the ongoing civil war in the neighbouring country. HIND documents a landscape and the daily life of a people who inhabit it. In this cinematic performance, Umama takes the audience on a journey through sound and image, sharing film footage which captures both the serenity and beauty of this environment and the inhabitants but also a reality of tension, poverty, fear and imminent danger.

HIND is supported by BANNER, an Artsadmin initiative which presents compelling work by artists who have recently graduated from art school. This production was made possible through Al-Mawred al Thaqafy – Culture Resource’s Production Awards Program.

Documentation of the performance by Guido Mencari.