Art Opening: ALIEN OF EXTRAORDINARY ABILITIES by Tracy Chahwan

Alien of Extraordinary Abilities brings together a decade of work by the Lebanese multidisciplinary artist Tracy Chahwan. The show features posters, textiles, and comics reflecting a practice driven by Chahwan's fierce independence, dark sense of humor, and restless observational curiosity. Featuring more than thirty artworks by the artist, Alien of Extraordinary Abilities represents the culmination of a period of exploration, experimentation and invention for their author.

Opening reception: Saturday, April 5 from 4:300–7:00.* Come see Tracy's art, eat free food, and meet the artist. Alien of Extraordinary Abilities will be on display in Studio 34's gallery until early June. Some prints and comics will also be for sale.

*Post-reception, attendees are invited to stay for The 40-Year-Old Ballerino by Chris Davis, one of five productions for Philly Theatre Week at Studio 34. Tickets are pay-what-you can, available here.

About Tracy Chahwan:

Tracy Chahwan’s work first appeared on the walls of Beirut as street art and posters for local independent music venues like the Beirut Groove Collective, Yukunkun Club, and Metro al Madina. She joined the Lebanese experimental comics collectives Samandal and Zeez to publish anthologies, magazines, and her first graphic novel, Beirut Bloody Beirut (Hachette, 2018). During the 2019 uprisings, she took to the streets with friends and colleagues to occupy public spaces, offering free screen printing workstations to create posters, T-shirts, and protest signs.  

In 2020, Chahwan relocated to the United States. She did a fellowship with the YallaPunk collective in 2021 and began working on journalistic comics in projects like Guantanamo Voices (Abrams), Where to Marie? Stories of Feminisms in Lebanon, and media platforms including The Nib. In 2023, she took part in La La Lil Jidar: 20 Years Behind the Apartheid Wall, which had a two-month residency at Studio 34. She created an installation work of seven woven tapestries for Do Arabs Dream of Electric Sheep? a 2023 group exhibition in Dubai and, in 2024, co-created the play The Suicide with theatre artists Lianne Souki and Lynn Hodeib.

Tracy Chahwan's illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, Wetransfer, Middle East Eye. and Vice Arabia. She continues to travel between the U.S. and the Levant, thinking, drawing, and doing her best to bear witness to the many strange madnesses unfolding all around us. See more at tracychahwan.com

This show is supported by our friends at Fireball Printing. See what they can do: fireballprinting.com