Gardens Speak

Across Syria, many gardens conceal the dead bodies of activists and protesters who adorned the streets during the early periods of the uprising. These domestic burials play out a continuing collaboration between the living and the dead. The dead protect the living by not exposing them to further danger at the hands of the regime. The living protect the dead by conserving their identities, telling their stories, and not allowing their deaths to become instruments of the regime. Gardens Speak is an interactive sound installation containing the oral histories of 10 ordinary people. Each narrative has been carefully constructed with the friends and family members of the deceased to retell their story as they themselves may have recounted it.

London- and Beirut-based artist Tania El Khoury creates installations and performances in which audience members are active collaborators. El Khoury’s work has been shown on five continents, in spaces ranging from museums to cable cars. She is the recipient of the Total Theatre Innovation Award and the Arches Brick Award.