My Name is Palestine @ Southern Exposure
Co-curated by Ahmad Alaqra and Leyya Mona Tawil, in collaboration with video artist Mohammad Tatour
Co-Produced by SoEx, Palestinian Museum, and Arab.AMP
Special thanks to Amer Shomali and Valerie Imus!
Join us for a Closing Reception for My Name is Palestine: Echoes from The Palestinian Museum’s Online Exhibit أنا إسمي شعب فلسطين “Ana Ismi Shab Falastin," on Saturday, May 30 at 5:00 PM at Southern Exposure.
For the closing of the exhibition on May 30, SoEx partners with Arab.AMP in presenting SPARKS #3 - LABOR; conversation and performances by NAKA Dance Theatre and Wael Buhaissy of Al Juthoor Dabke Troupe.
Wael Buhaissy performs songs on oud.
Naka Dance performs Last Seen, choreographed and performed by José Ome Mazatl and Debby Kajiyama, with sound by giant undersea creatures. Last Seen is a work-in-progress duet that navigates blurred landscapes and bureaucratic entanglements. Set in motion by a kidnapping and detention, the piece traces a search across languages, states, and borders.This initial exploration contributes to a larger work, If you take a path that staggers, will it throw the bloodhounds off your trail?, examining fugitivity as a strategy for survival.
WAEL BUHAISSY was born and raised in Kuwait to Palestinian parents from Gaza. He immigrated to the US in 1989, and soon after found himself creating a life in the Bay Area. He graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He currently works as an Electrical Engineer in the field of radiation oncology and medical devices. Wael was a member of the Jafra Dabke Troupe, led by Elias Khoury, from 1990-1993. He co-founded the Al Juthoor dabke troupe in 2006, and became the lead choreographer in 2008. Under Wael’s direction, Al Juthoof of the Arab Diaspora has appeared throughout the Bay Area at benefits, protests, schools, and cultural events. Al Juthoor have been Arab.AMP Resident Artists at Temescal Art Center since 2016. Wael also is a self-taught oudist and dumbek player, and was a member of the Aswat Ensemble from 2010-2012 as a vocalist.
Founded in 2001 by José Ome Navarrete Mazatl and Debby Kajiyama in Oakland, California, NAKA DANCE THEATER (Closing reception performers) is thrilled to be part of SPARKS. NAKA creates experimental performance works that integrate dance, storytelling, multimedia installations, and site-specific environments. In 2026, the company is honored to launch its 25th Anniversary year with a presentation at Movement Research at Judson Church. NAKA cultivates deep partnerships with communities, engaging people’s histories and folklore to create accessible performances that challenge audiences to think critically about social justice, migration, and racial equity. Beyond performance, NAKA co-produces Live Arts in Resistance (LAIR) in partnership with EastSide Arts Alliance—an ongoing series of performance showcases, artist residencies, and community town halls that confront racial inequity and white supremacy in popular culture. NAKA Dance Theater is a fiscally sponsored project of Dancers’ Group.
Arab. AMP is a growing community of worldbuilding artists from the SWANA diaspora and our allied communities. Using live art and music, Arab.AMP artists are meeting the disconnection of diaspora—from land, culture, and community—with embodiment, folk wisdom, and dreams of a future rooted in the abundance that connection to land makes possible. Arab.AMP events are shaped in relationship with each host community and serve as invitations into radical imagination and future building for artists and audience. Launched in 2017, and led by Leyya Mona Tawil, Arab.AMP operates in partnership with venues and platforms internationally. AMP produces events, holds gatherings, offers commissions, and hosts residencies for the artists and communities we serve. Arab.AMP, a program of DANCE ELIXIR 501c3, is supported by the Hewlett Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation NEW Grant, East Bay Community Foundation - East Bay Fund for Artists, Akonadi Foundation, and NNAAC National Arts Partners Fund.
About the Exhibition
Music and song have been integral to Palestine's cultural fabric for centuries, evolving through dynamic exchanges with civilisations that have traversed this land. Palestinians sing in a wide range of circumstances, in the fields and in prisons, about harvests and hunger, exile and return, and about refugee camps and homeland, thus transforming singing into a collective practice that reflects the very fabric of society as it moves between private and public spaces.
The أنا إسمي شعب فلسطين “Ana Ismi Shab Falastin” collection was researched and developed by Ahmed Alaqra and The Palestinian Museum (Birzeit) over a period of years. Southern Exposure’s iteration of My Name is Palestine was co-curated by Alaqra and Leyya Mona Tawil for our Bay Area community, in collaboration with video artist Mohammad Tatour. This sound and video work examines the role of music as a cultural and political force within the Palestinian context, with a particular focus on its evolution alongside the liberation movement. Music is situated as both witness and participant in a continuum of resistance, where the act of creation becomes inseparable from the pursuit of justice.
Please join us for the Opening Reception on May 2nd featuring @spiteofdarkness - MIKE KHOURY’S SPITE OF DARKNESS consists of Mike Khoury and Indira Edwards on violin, Ben Hall and Ali Allen Colding on drums. They perform the compositions of Palestinian-American composer Mike Khoury.