MQ Artist-in Residence Noha Essam
Unspoken – Ecotalisman Index

Wed 17.12.2025, 15h
At MQ AiR Studios 5, 6, 7 | Free entry

Noha Essam’s multimedia works arise from the artist's profound reflection on the global ecological crisis. In her work, Essam combines current issues with the unspoken and intangible intercultural represented by Eco-talisman messages from the earth, environment and mythology of amulets and tokens that could be sensed, felt, perceived and realized. Through her own experience in living between different middle eastern and European countries, she could feel the Diaspora aesthetics and the paradoxes of personalities. The artist became aware of humanity's dependence on self-perception in rewriting the new earth messages to humans in light of cross-cultural sensory dialogue that could be translated into issues of environmental pollution and climate change without a real need for translation.

Noha Essam uses nature cues and talismans both as an ecological symbol and as a spiritual metaphor. It represents the 'breath of life', which is disrupted by human greed and a lack of mindfulness towards nature while seeking to preserve a space for memory and mourning for a damaged natural origin that can never be regained but could only be imaginatively reinvented.