I Have Two Names, Which Meet and Part
Group Exhibition
Vernissage: 19.03.2025, 7-10 PM
Exhibition duration: 20.03.2025 - 04.04.2025
This exhibition explores themes of family history, inherited narratives, and the complex "in-between" experiences of second-generation immigrants, particularly in relation to Palestine and Lebanon. Developed and organized through dialogue among second-generation Palestinian, Israeli, and Lebanese artists and writers, the exhibition creates space for personal experiences to be shared and discuss Palestine and its history within today’s tense academic and social climate.
Through various artistic and literary forms, it examines racism, integration, and the alienation from one's own roots, as well as the transmission—or absence—of cultural traditions within bicultural upbringings. The works by Alexander Paula Salem, Christian Azzouni, Tali Bühl, Juliane Schweitzer and an artist who prefers to remain Anonymous reflect on shared grief, solidarity, and the intersections of personal and political memory. Questions of violence, representation, conditional Whiteness, and the contradictions within solidarity movements are also central, offering an exploration of identity, displacement, and historical continuity.
The exhibition's program includes a reading session featuring texts by Nicole Collignon, Alexander Paula Salem, and Tali Bühl, a collective reading and translation workshop dedicated to the works of Mahmoud Darwish, and an artist-led tour.
The exhibition's title is drawn from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, honoring the artistic struggles that preceded this moment.
Public Program
Public Program
19.03.2025 | 7-10 PM
Vernissage and Reading
by Nicole Collignon, Alexander Paula Salem, and Tali Bühl
26.03.2025 | 5-10 PM
Collective Reading and translation workshop of Mahmoud Darwish Texts
5-7:30 PM Workshop
8:00-9:30 PM reading)
REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED for the Workshop** send us an email to sayhi@improperwalls.com to reserve your place as we have limited capacity.
04.04.2025 | 7 PM
Artists Tour
Artists Bios
Nicole Collignon studied creative writing and cultural journalism as well as language arts in Bachelor. She is now studying language arts in the masters programme at Angewandte, was nominated for Wortmeldungen Förderpreis 2022, and won the Wortmeldungen Förderpreis 2023. She is currently working on essays and her first novel.
Alexander Paula Salem is a Viennese artist with Palestinian roots. Since 2023, they have been studying in the class of Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Their artistic practice spans various media, primarily painting, poetry, and graphic art. Their work deals with violence and the stories we tell about it.
tali bühl (they/them) born in 1999 in hannover, grew up there and sometimes in tel aviv. now living between copenhagen, hamburg, and vienna, they study oceanography and creative writing. write prose and prosaic, more and more often essayistic. sometimes journalistic, for various newspapers and magazines. scholarship holder of the heinrich böll foundation, currently looking for—preferably by the sea.
Juliane Schweitzer, born in the depths of the upper Austrian forest, is a social worker and art student. After mainly working with ceramics, drawing and photography, they dove into screenprinting within the last months. Their art is mainly inspired by the people surrounding them, the communities they're in and the connections and trenches between those.
Christian Azzouni's artistic practice focuses on the reality connoted in photographic images, which is depicted within a painterly process. Drawings and Sketches from his head by pencil are being transferred onto the light-sensitive material by a physical-chemical process. In doing so, he emphasises his own reflections and experiences on disproportionate power, social structures and racism. He graduated in Graphic Design & Photography at the University of Art and Design Linz in 2021 and in Art & Time / Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2024. Since 2023 he has been studying Visual Communication at the University of Art and Design Linz and since 2024 Art & Image / Context with Alice Creischer, Andreas Siekmann, Ruby Jana Sircar at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Visual design by: Christian Azzouni
Organized and Curated by : Alexander Paula Salem, Christian Azzouni and Nicole Collignon