In Daughters of the River, Adham Faramawy incorporates dance, sound and spoken word to tell stories of the romances and toxicities of rivers and waterways. Borrowing from Alexander Pope’s poem ‘Windsor-Forest’, the performance slips between poetic and narrative storytelling, taking the audience on a fluid journey through these aqueous ecosystems. The performance explores the tense, often porous borders between purity and impurity while tracing the imperialist roots of popular waterways that serve as life-giving forces to millions. Drawing on history, mythology, fiction and queer desire to reveal the colonial undercurrents of rivers, Faramawy consequently identifies them as sites of ecological collapse.
Daughters of the River was originally commissioned and performed as part of Queer Earth and Liquid Matters in 2022, a programme of events that brought together artists, writers, filmmakers, and sound and architecture practitioners to explore decolonial and queer ecologies. The work will be restaged at Stone Nest in July 2024 as part of the Infinite Ecologies Marathon.
Presented in collaboration with Stone Nest.
Stone Nest is an arts organisation and performance venue in the heart of London’s West End, bringing exceptional and experimental art to a wide audience. A hidden gem nestled amidst the bright lights of theatreland, it offers a platform for bold, visionary artists and a space where audiences can encounter an eclectic programme of contemporary performance.
Stone Nest is an old building and unfortunately cannot currently accommodate electric wheelchairs. We can accommodate manually operated wheelchairs at ground floor level via a temporary ramp; please let us know that you are a wheelchair user when booking.
The Infinite Ecologies Marathon is a long durational project that looks at the world-building potential of culture in the face of ecological destruction. Committing to working towards planetary thriving, this interdisciplinary series centres artist-led reimaginings for environmental action.
Performers: Folu Odimayo and Jose Funnell
Flautist: Sophia Pan
Curated by
Curated and produced by Kostas Stasinopoulos, Curator, Live Programmes, Serpentine and Holly Shuttleworth, Executive Producer, HS Studio, with Daisy Gould, Assistant Curator, Live Programmes, Serpentine, Isobel Peyton Jones, Producer, Serpentine, Andy Downie, Production Manager, Velocet
Artist Bio
Adham Faramawy works across media including moving image, sculptural installation, performance, print, painting and wall-based works engaging concerns with materiality, touch, and toxic embodiment to question ideas of the natural in relation to marginalised communities.
They have had screenings at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Modern and Tate Britain, London; Serpentine Gallery, London and Serpentine Ecologies Symposia, London. They have had recent exhibitions at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Arts, London (group), Somerset House, London (group), Buffalo University Gallery, Buffalo (group); the Bemis Center, Omaha (group); Niru Ratnam Gallery, London (solo), Chapter Gallery, Cardiff (solo), and Cell Projects, London (solo). They were shortlisted for the Film London Jarman Award 2021 and 2017 and was the recipient of the Frieze London Artist Award 2023.
