Laila Abd Elrazaq & Dana Mazal Ziv: Mother Tongue

We are not born with a language; we inherit it. Hence the expression Mother Tongue—the first language heard by a newborn. The socio-cultural space in which we grow up, the community with which we identify, however, also bequeath us a language. Thus, one may feel that s.he does not have a single mother tongue, but rather a few, reflecting belonging to several communities simultaneously or, alternatively, a lack of total belonging to any single one.

The exhibition emerged from a collaboration between Laila Abd Elrazaq and Dana Mazal Ziv—a video artist and a composer—who, within the framework of the Haifa Museums' Space for Community Art Incubator, invited Arabic speakers from various local communities to reflect on their relationships with language. Excerpts from the interviews are played in the intimate listening booths, accompanied by textual video works in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, which shift between translation of the uttered words and their distortion, visually illustrating how the multiplicity of languages ​​is sometimes experienced as a disturbance. Interview fragments were rendered as choral compositions, which envelop the space. The individual's words become lost within a collective ensemble of voices, which together create an alternative community of people without a single national language.

Identity is shaped through language, and language is shaped through identity. Language can thus serve as a political statement, and at the same time act in unconscious ways. The exchange of languages ​​creates a listening space, inviting a moment of pause, lingering, and acknowledgement of complexity; a moment in which one may draw nearer and understand, or not understand at all and explore the meaning born precisely from this lack of understanding.

Soloists: Faraj Srour, Shira Ziv | Choir: Laila Abd Elrazaq, Tomer Borochov, Tal Cohen, Alon Eisenman, Daniel Lederman, Lams Salameh, Faraj Srour, Dana Mazal Ziv, Shira Ziv 

The production of the work was made possible through the generosity of Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies; Austrian Cultural Forum Tel Aviv; Edmond de Rothschild Center; Israel Lottery Council for Culture and Arts; Tambour