Our visiting resident, Khaled Khalifa (based in Cairo), hosted a workshop around dreams where the team shared their dreams, drew them and explores the streams of consciousness they open up:

For the past 8 years I’ve kept a dream journal where I’ve documented my dreams almost everyday. In the context of this Fisherwomxn residency on collective learning and deconstructing the library, I thought this would be a fitting offering to bring forth; I asked the fellow residents to keep their own dream journals the week leading up to the workshop where we would share our dreams orally and through drawing if they felt inclined.

As we shared we realized there were threads that connected each of our dreams. Loizos let us know that what we were doing was unknowingly the practice of the Achuar tribe in Ecuador, who would gather each morning in the same manner to share their journeys in sleep from the night before. The dreams would serve as insight or omen to the day ahead and accordingly the Achuar would plan out their daily activities based on them.

The practice of sharing allows us to illuminate our personal subconscious libraries to the waking world, creating space for resolution, guidance and connection through voicing and listening.

Khaled Khalifa (b.2002, Cairo, Egypt) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Cairo. Khaled holds a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from the University Of Nicosia, Cyprus. Weaving together sculpture, scenography, costume, sound, video, and performance, the artist’s practice deals with space, place, and the self, handling the notions of personal and collective soma and memory.