Generation: Sawsan AlSaraf, Tamara Abdul Hadi, Sundus Abdul Hadi

Generation is an exhibition that brings together two generations of Iraqi-Canadian women artists—mother Sawsan AlSaraf and her daughters Tamara and Sundus Abdul Hadi—offering a dialogue between their artworks as to how three members of the same family respond artistically to complex themes of representation, identity, and displacement in a contemporary global world. Each artist works from a very idiosyncratic point of view and preferred artistic media, yet together they cross-pollinate, collaborate, and synthesize ideas as common belief systems experienced in their lifetimes.

Collectively, the presentation explores the complexity of ‘minority’ communities, and specifically Arab communities, that are often simultaneously subjected to both stereotyping and underrepresentation. As diasporic artists, the movement of people through space and time—and how the complex creation of such is sometimes controlled by systems (political, social, cultural) beyond one’s own power—is important personal territory to explore.

The result is an exhibition that bridges our connections with others, focusing on humanity as the unifier. All three artists are collaborators as part of the Diasporic collective called We are the Medium, founded and activated by a complex group of visual and performing arts. The Medium’s goals are to offer voice to and aid in the cultural representation of the “other”, and constructing the identity of the ‘new citizen’ in a world of displacement – the people of Internationality.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website