Calling cards always sat in a bowl at the entrance of Nada El-Omari and Sonya Mwambu’s childhood homes, from Uganda to Egypt and Palestine, through various lands and onto Turtle Island. For separated families, calling cards were a way to witness a connection across generations and displacements, from here to wherever home is. Originally conceived at the start of a global pandemic as a website, +1-home now continues its life as a digital installation in a gallery, custom-made to InterAccess’s immersive projection environment as a two-player interactive experience.
Exhibition
April 21 – May 11, 2024
InterAccess, Toronto ON, CA
Gallery hours: 11 – 6PM
Opening Reception
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
InterAccess, 7 – 9pm
There is a card that I carry in my wallet, it used to bend around the curves of a golden metallic bowl placed on the outer left corner of a square wooden table by the front door of our apartment. In it, nails, batteries, pens, keys, a small notebook, cigarettes, matches, coins, and a lighter would flop in and out, depending on who was home. Always, without fault, if you swept your small hand along the valley of the curved brass, your fingertips would hit a thin little card with a different design than the last one. Bodies shift, they grow, change, recover, hurt, and leave, but I’ve carried the calling card you had left at the bottom of that bowl for years. On my way out, when the bowl ended up in a box and you left it in a storage unit, I remember the moment I placed it in my wallet and I thought, do you think it’ll still work and I could call you? I have my own bowl now, and in it I lose all the things I would rummage through as a child.
Thank you, for being our archives, and showing us how to create our own. Here is our calling card. Talk to you soon.
Love,
Sonya & Nada.
+1-home was developed with the support of InterAccess’s inaugural IA 360º Artists-in-Residence program, with technical lead support by Terry Anastasiadis and Kyle Duffield.
InterAccess | Sonya Mwambu | Nada El-Omari
About the Artists
Nada El-Omari is a filmmaker and writer of Palestinian and Egyptian origin based in Montreal, Quebec. Her practice and research interests centre on the intergenerational transmissions of memories, displacement, and the stories of belonging and identity which she explores through a poetic, hybrid lens. Focusing on process and fragments in text, sound, and image, Nada explores new ways to self-narrate, and speak hybridity and self. El-Omari holds a BFA in Film Production and an MFA in Film from York University.
Sonya Mwambu is an experimental filmmaker and editor based in Toronto. Born in Kampala, they grew up in Canada. Their work centres on the intersections of their identities through the exploration of race, gender, language and the connections they find through the experimentations of analogue film. Mwambu holds a BFA in Film Production from York University.
About Ia 360°
IA 360° is a permanent immersive projection environment bespoke to the InterAccess gallery. Transforming InterAccess’s gallery, the technology encourages artists to leverage sensory intensity for critical thinking. As immersive environments have grown in cultural importance, InterAccess, through IA 360º, brings opportunities into the reach of the artistic community, supporting experimentation and innovation by making immersive technology available to artists, collectives, students, and the wider community.
All images courtesy of the artists.
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