Sana Nassari’s cultural highligts
Sana Nassari is a British-Iranian poet, writer, translator, and art historian based in London. She has published one novel and a collection of short stories, These Two Roses (Exiled Writer Ink, 2020). Her poetry collection O Delilah won second prize for an unpublished collection at the Journalists Poetry Award and Departure, a second collection of her poetry has been recently published by the reputable publishing house Morvarid in Iran. Sana has also translated two novels by the American writer Karen Joy Fowler and The Graveyard by Polish writer Marek Hłasko into Farsi. Her translation of The Certificate by Isaac Bashevis Singer is forthcoming. Sana holds an M.A. in the History of Art from SOAS, University of London. Since 2021, she has been actively contributing to Writers Mosaic magazine, specialising in art and literature reviews.
Exhibition: Arab Presences: Modern Art and Decolonisation
During my recent visit to the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, I explored the Arab Presences: Modern Art and Decolonisation exhibition. Featuring over 200 works by Arab artists, the exhibition was divided into four chronological sections: ‘Nahda’, ‘Farewell to Orientalism’, ‘Decolonisation’, and ‘Art and political struggle’. These sections highlighted the deep connections between Arab modern art and the political, cultural, and social shifts of the 20th century, including France’s colonial withdrawal. The exhibition powerfully showcased the great scale of Arab artists’ contributions to modern art, especially those less known or underrepresented, offering a rich, absorbing understanding of the region’s artistic evolution.
https://www.mam.paris.fr/en/expositions/exhibitions-arab-presences
Theatre: Slave Play
I found Slave Play by Jeremy O. Harris at the Noël Coward Theatre in London to be an unforgettable experience that challenged my perceptions of race, power, class, and gender within relationships. The play’s explicit sexual dynamics and controversial themes sparked intense reactions, even leading to a petition for its cancellation. Yet, the show’s ability to shift from comic dialogue to deeply emotional scenes made the overwhelming content more bearable. The mirrored backstage wall was particularly striking, not only precluding any concealment of actions, but also reflecting the audience as contemporary witnesses to how the darkest aspects of history persist today, hidden within the most intimate moments of our lives.
https://www.noelcowardtheatre.co.uk/whats-on/slave-play
Non Fiction: The Return
Now that Hisham Matar’s latest novel, My Friends, has won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, I invite you to revisit his 2016 memoir, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between. I believe this powerful book is rooted in Matar’s desire to explore the theme of friendship. In The Return, Matar takes readers on a deeply personal journey in search of his disappeared father, Jaballa Matar, navigating the complex labyrinth of Libya’s recent history. The memoir is a poignant reflection on enforced disappearances, the profound changes in his homeland, and the sharp details of a young student’s life, who, forced to hide his true identity, in a moment of honesty realises that true friendship is impossible when living under a false identity.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/72121/hisham-matar/
Poetry: Conversation with a Stone by Wisława Szymborska
‘Conversation with a Stone’ is one of those poems I return to time and again, each reading offering something new. The poem narrates a dialogue between a speaker, presumably human, and a stone. The speaker wishes to enter the stone to explore its interior, sparking a conversation filled with rejections and insistence. Despite being one of Wisława Szymborska’s earliest published works (Salt, 1962), the originality of the idea, combined with the marvel of this imaginary dialogue, makes it timeless. I usually read Wisława Szymborska’s poems in Shahram Sheydayi’s Persian translation, but I’m sure you can find a good English version of this Nobel Prize-winning poet as well.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wisaawa-szymborska
Photo by Mariusz Kubik, courtesy of wikicommons
Online Exhibition: Rhythms of The Soul
Recently, I came across Rhythms Of The Soul, an online exhibition on the Blue Rhino Art platform. It showcases 14 vivid portraits by young Nigerian artist Daniel Ayomide Emmanuel. His art, as he asserts, is a visual exploration of the black human experience, musical life, and an endeavour to capture the intangible emotions, thoughts, and moments that shape African lives. In these portraits, friendship, body, loneliness, passion, music, and sisterhood are being explored.
‘Hold me tight’ by Daniel Ayomide Emmanuel
https://artspaces.kunstmatrix.com/en/exhibition/13424081/rhythms-soul
Film: Cinema Sabaya
Cinema Sabaya (2021) is a film that celebrates the power of storytelling, art, and cinema. The story follows eight women – Jewish and Muslim – from diverse social backgrounds, who come together for a film-making workshop. Initially strangers, they soon discover unexpected connections. I found Cinema Sabaya to be a modest film with a straightforward plot, gaining its strength from the rich, parallel sub-stories. Based on screenwriter and director Orit Fouks Rotem’s personal experiences, the film explores each woman’s life, exploring their struggles with identity, social roles, and religious and political conflicts through the footage they share in class.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6443330/
A favourite WritersMosaic writer:
Eric Ngalle Charles has a unique writing style, characterised by the intimate use of his personal story and a tone that never aims to intimidate the reader.