Walls of Hasra حيطان الحسرة

Drawing on mourning rituals and practices of inscription in the Levant, the performance reflects on how trauma is expressed through markings, writings, graffiti, and visual traces on urban surfaces. These inscriptions become a shared language of grief that exists at the intersection of personal suffering and collective memory.

At the center of the work is *Hasra*—a term that defies direct translation and describes a deep, enduring state of longing, regret, and unresolved grief.

Moving between Beirut and Berlin, the piece explores migration, war, displacement, as well as the censorship or erasure of grief, and questions how grief is regulated, silenced, or made visible in different contexts. It asks what happens when there are no walls left to bear the grief—and how suffering persists across bodies, cities, and borders.

Artist Biography:

Ahmad Baba is a multidisciplinary performance artist who works at the intersection of dance, video, sound, and body-based practices. He holds a BA in Performance and Theater and an MA in Dance and Movement Therapy. His work explores themes such as liminality, migration, exile, memory, and the politics of the body. As a queer migrant artist, he creates performances and installations that examine how social, political, and spatial forces shape physical existence; in doing so, he frequently works with collective and ritualized practices to open up spaces of presence, reflection, and alternative ways of being.

• By: Ahmad Baba
• Concept and Performance: Ahmad Baba
• Set Design Assistant: Jad Mady
• Dramaturgical support: Mansur Ajang
• Artistic Consultation (“Outside Eye”): Manon Bartsch
• Costume collaboration: Haralambos Nikolaou

Walls of Hasra حيطان الحسرة

• Solo performance by Ahmad Baba
• Dance / Multimedia performance
• Language: English & Arabic