Tewa Barnosa

Lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Artist statement

I am an interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker based between Tripoli and Amsterdam. My practice spans installation, painting, and time-based media, including film essays, sound works, and performance. My work carries an inquiry and speculation around spatial and infrastructural violence, extractive technology, inherited memories and transmissions from lands, people and species that outlasts the aftermath of genocidal and ecological continuum. My process unfolds along two interconnected trajectories: a sonic evocation and oral tradition of collective vocality, rhythms and anti-colonial poetry rooted in Amazigh and Bedouin knowledge systems, electro-acoustic compositions and field recordings. and a trajectory of visual and image based research into politics of the archive, questioning the roles of imagery, iconography, video games and cinema in constructing or manipulating past and ongoing political imaginaries. I developed a pedagogical and socially engaged practice that emerged through establishing collective infrastructures in post-revolution Libya. Between 2015 and 2023, I initiated and directed WaraQ, an art space and laboratory based in Tripoli. During this period, I curated and led several projects situated within the knowledge and lived realities of the Libyan civil war, including Totalitarian Props (2023), an exhibition on the socio-political implications of Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism movements; Shifting Sands (2021), a mentorship program and exhibition...

Artwork