January 11, 2024–
February 10, 2024
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Curated by Jaclyn Quaresma
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Work by Nour Bishouty
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Ace Hotel, Toronto
Images Festival, Toronto
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This installation was presented as part of a yearlong partnership between Ace Hotel and Images Festival. Four artists have been invited to participate in quarterly, month-long residencies at the hotel followed by an exhibition of their work. The residency takes place under the theme of (g)host, extending the 2023 festival’s central inquiry and foregrounding moving images to contend with ideas at the intersection of archives, spirit, care, and hospitality.
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Documentation by Darren Rigo
The installation, Notes for a Guest Book by Nour Bishouty, is a collection of images and texts that consider the hotel as an omnipresent spectre always appearing as a witness, attesting to moments of gathering, remembering, collective action, celebration, as well as war, violence, and exile.
The reflection, conversations, research, and creative process that Nour explored in the weeks leading up to, during, and after her residency with Ace Hotel and Images Festival are poetically woven through these fragments.
Pulled from the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive, the collected materials act as visual records documenting moments from the history of Palestine’s colonization. These vistas articulate alternative voices of resistance.
About the Artist
Nour Bishouty is an interdisciplinary artist working across media including video, sculpture, works on paper, digital images, and writing. Her work engages with histories and narratives of place and poses questions around dissonance, opacity, legibility, and the generative possibilities of misunderstanding. Bishouty’s work has been exhibited in Canada and internationally including at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto (2022); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2021); Darat Al Funun, Amman (2017); Casa Arabe, Madrid (2016); Access Gallery, Vancouver (2015); the Mosaic Rooms, London (2015); and the Beirut Art Centre, Beirut (2014). Her artist book 1—130: Selected works Ghassan Bishouty b. 1941 Safad, Palestine — d. 2004 Amman, Jordan, edited by Jacob Korczynsci, was co-published in 2020 by Art Metropole (Toronto) and Motto Books (Berlin). Upcoming exhibitions include La biennale de Québec (Feb 2024).
Jaclyn Quaresma 