The Water Diviners, Jumana Emil Abboud (2020-) (EMPIRE LINES x Artes Mundi 11, Mostyn)

Contemporary artist Jumana Emil Abboud respirits water sources from Palestine to Wales, drawing on folklore, oral storytelling, and memories of dispossession and resistance, in her ongoing series of collaborative workshops and performances, The Water Diviners (2020-).

Jumana Emil Abboud’s exhibition is at Mostyn in Llandudno until 22 February 2026.

Artes Mundi 11 continues at venues across Wales until 1 March 2026, with the winner announced at the National Museum Cardiff on 15 January 2026.

For more from Mostyn, hear artist ⁠Taloi Havini⁠, winner of Artes Mundi 10, on the connections between extractive industries in the Pacific Islands and Wales. and their work documenting the environmental damage caused by colonial, and patriarchal, relations with land, in Habitat (2017): pod.link/1533637675/episode/e30bd079e3b389a1d7e68f5e2937a797

And contemporary and performance artist ⁠Paul Maheke⁠, as he moves between France, Congo, and Canada, and explores the ‘archive of their body’ through drawing and dance, in Taboo Durag (2021): ⁠pod.link/1533637675/episode/56020e3b6ddd4b59c15296540a140bd1 ⁠

Read into Alia Farid’s embroidered tapestry series Elsewhere (2023), at Chisenhale in London, and the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo, in recessed.space: recessed.space/00232-Alia-Farid-at-Henie-Onstad-Kunstsenter

For more from curator Rachel Dedman, listen to the episode about an UNRWA Dress from Ramallah, Palestine (1930s)⁠: pod.link/1533637675/episode/92c34d07be80fe43a8e328705a7d80cb

And read into the exhibition, Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery, at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge and the Whitworth in Manchester, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/textiles-in-cambridge-palestinian-embroidery-at-kettles-yard

For more from Siren Songs: Water as told by Artists at the Villa Medici in Rome (2025), read about Yannis Maniatakos and Zeljko Kujundzic, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/men-at-sea-yannis-maniatakos-and-zeljko-kujundzic

And on water as archive, history, and method, listen to curator Eleanor Nairne on Julianknxx’s Chorus in Rememory of Flight (2023) at the Barbican, and Professor Paul Gilroy, on The Black Atlantic (1993-Now) in Plymouth.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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