Exhibition Opening | Mas{a/i}r . مسار . مسیر The Map of Nearness

q/g[h]ALBI is a creative platform for social practice, collaborations, and experimental research founded by artists Sirena Varma and Prita Tina Yeganeh. q/g[h]ALBI explores migration, diasporic identity, and collective futures across homelands and settler lands in Queensland. In its first public collaboration, q/g[h]ALBI collaborates with Magan-djin (Brisbane)-based creatives Lamisse Hamouda and Aleea Monsour.

The Map of Nearness is an evolving, interactive site-responsive installation developed through a year of gathering, conversation and collective-making between Aleea, Lamisse, Prita and Sirena.

Emerging from discussions circulating loss, isolation, fracture, yearning, (re)connection and intimacy within diasporic life in Australia, and informed by their guesthood in Magan-djin (Brisbane), the artists turn toward reclaiming cultural coordinates guiding guesthood, kinship, gathering and collective care. Weaving and embroidery practices, drawn from their Lebanese, Egyptian, Iranian and Palestinian heritages, merge to operate as the central visual languages of the installation. Woven, stitched, tangled, broken and unfinished, these gestures map displacement, transmission, inheritances, paths forward, and entry points for continuing the conversation.

By entering the exhibition, visitors are welcomed into the conversation, and into relation, through an invitation to contribute to the work. As they thread in their responses, visitors move from passive observers to active participants; their actions mapping them into the growing cartography of relationality held by The Map of Nearness.

The Map of Nearness deliberately refuses resolve, favouring reflection through process and participation. The work weaves audiences into a living conversation that explores how belonging is made, instead of identified; a critical shifting from the declaration of ‘this is what it is’ to the question of ‘what do we do with what it is?’

ARTISTS

Aleea Monsour is an independent artist, dramaturg and community theatre practitioner based in Brisbane. Her practice centres theatre and the arts as agents for social change, with a particular focus on amplifying the voices of women, young people and marginalised communities.

Lamisse Hamouda (she/her) is a writer, poet and interdisciplinary artist working across text and performance. Lamisse's debut novel, 'The Shape of Dust' won the National Biography of the Year Award in 2024. Lamisse has published across a range of platforms and anthologies; her recent works include published poetry in the Sweatshop anthology 'Ritual: Australian-Muslim Poetry', and her poetry series 'Griefscape' - produced in collaboration with musician Han Reardon-Smith for issue 48 of Runway Journal.

Prita Tina Yeganeh is a multidisciplinary visual artist and workshop facilitator of Iranian heritage, based in Magan-djin (Brisbane), Queensland. Her practice explores the politics of land, migration, and belonging through social practice, experimental research, moving image, printmaking, and installations.

Prita’s iterative project My Soil Farsh was awarded the 47th Fremantle Print Award in 2025, following the CHURCHIE Commendation and People’s Choice Awards 2024. Alongside exhibitions, Yeganeh’s expanded practice includes community-led projects, collaborating with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) and World Craft Council-Australia. She co-founded Magan-djin Creatives for Palestine in 2024 and became Co-Director of q/g[h]ALBI in 2025. She has spoken on forced migration, home, and the social value of craft at RMIT School of Art, IOTA 2024, and the Brisbane Multicultural Arts Centre's Creative Confluence program.

Sirena Varma is a multidisciplinary designer and artist working across the visual arts, graphic design and exhibition design from Beirut, based in Magan-djin. Through collaboration and co-creation, her work engages cultural care, collective memory and visual storytelling. Her practice has been featured in Beirut Design Week, Dutch Design Week, Frame Magazine and the Institute of Modern Art.

Formerly an architect and now a graphic designer, Sirena is the co-founder and creative director of Twig Collaborative, where she has spent over a decade refining interdisciplinary processes. Through Twig, she has worked with global brands and academic institutions including Uber, Beirut Art Center, Parsons The New School and Stanford University.

This is a free event, and all are welcome to attend, engage and explore, respectfully. There will be a licenced bar with non-alcoholic options.

Produced by q/g[h]ALBI @g.h.albi

ACCESSIBILITY: The gallery is wheelchair accessible from the Brunswick St entrance.

If you have any specific access needs or questions, please either email admin@outerspacebrisbane.org or send us a message on Instagram. 

Outer Space is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, the Australian Government through Creative Australia and the Outer Space community.

Image courtesy of q/g[h]ALBI