Selected projects

In symbiosis.. خ.ل.ل

Manzool Space · Damascus · 2026

خ.ل.ل In symbiosis.. Yen Mo, Serene Debs, and Sa'ad Choeb A shared week in Damascus, an organic process of connection and experience. Three artists moving through a delicate sequence of chance and deeply felt occurrences. Eukayrotic organisms take center stage, expressed in fungi, mold and fermentation, food, image and texture. While the English title of symbiosis encourages a microbial origin, a shift towards the Arabic, خ ل ل opens the linguistic space. Here we can move easily through rupture, imbalance, vinegar, intimacy and inner shift. As I think through both titles, I consider that symbiosis also holds a tension within, a crack, a slight misalignment, a space for something to grow, yet within the framework of the word, the specificity of this language, it takes a little more work, perhaps some help, to feel it. Such work between languages speaks directly to its inherent instability, seen here as a positive, if complex, reality of many who inhabit more than one linguistic space. Such gaps in translation, and an acceptance of such, is one of the more positive aspects of instability engendered through this exhibition. As in language, roots here are stretched rather than planted, are material, more and less than discourse. Roots rub against each other, spread sideways, drift. And indeed, migration stretches itself throughout, unwinding around Hakka histories of nomadism, settlement and clan networks, Palestinian attachment to land as resistance and the experience of Syrian and Lebanese diasporas. Here, movement is wound and movement is adaptation, perhaps it is both at once. Food is an anchor, and mushrooms are cooked, fermented, shared. Carrying nutritional density, medicinal histories, microbial intelligence, fermentation feels like a good teacher. Something breaks down, reorganizes, flavor deepens, structure changes. Time does the work, and place must open to accommodate every shift. In a mycelium-like embracing of what is often unseen, felt and known, the three practices are woven through the space. The soundscape transforms the electrical pulses of the mushrooms into sound, tiny signals becoming audible textures, the steady hum bringing a kind of stability to a landscape that is more often considered unstable, and the act of listening shifts towards tuning in.