He tends to go only where he is invited or where there is an intrinsic affinity, his projects being rooted in an intimate engagement with place. A grandson of Syrian immigrants he was born and raised on Sylix (Okanagan) territory in Kelowna, BC. After 22 years living and working in San Francisco, Banff, Toronto, San Diego, Beirut, and New York he has been based on the unceded Xwmetskwíyem/xʷməθkʷey̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh/sqʷx̌ʷoʔməx (Squamish) + Selíl̓witulh/səíl̓wətaʔł (Tsleil-Waututh) land of ‘Vancouver’ for 23 years. His videotapes, photographs, installations, and other cultural projects engage the personal/subjective, reconfiguring notions of identity, community, history, boundaries, exile, (trans/inter/intra)nationalism and resistance. His work has involved production and facilitation in many locales including Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, the former Yugoslavia, Europa, San Francisco, San Diego, New York, Central America, Mexico, Columbia, Ecuador, Kamloops, Kelowna, Cumberland House, Vancouver, Aotearoa, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Philippines and Australia. He has exhibited pervasively at the widest range of local and international venues possible, from the smallest unnamed storefronts in his downtown eastside Vancouver neighbourhood to institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, National Gallery of Canada, Bienal De La Havana, Sharjah Biennial, Biennale of Sydney and the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
verisimilitude(s) and permutations, installation view, MKG127, 2019
verisimilitude(s) and permutations, installation view, MKG127, 2019
verisimilitude(s) and permutations, installation view, MKG127, 2019
Flower collection, 2009-2012 as installed at MKG127 in the exhibition, location/dis-location(s):contigent promises, 2012
night for day, spectacle in case, 10/10/14
standing where we are , apparent parallel lives, pondering scene gaze through the looking glass, KN & KNG at hotel elevator lobby, Syilx site (Okanagan), Kelowna, Canada, 8/22/17
glow , East Vancouver
regarding, from 'looking cluster', buddhas' cave site, Bamiyan, Afghanistan, (from: the heart that has no love/pain/generosity is not a heart (fragments)], 4/16/08
parallel but apart, K's father Claude's once village now edge of city, Shaoxing, China, 3/15/13
eliding layers, end of the Corniche, W. Beirut, 9/21/15
demarcating – fields of windswept dryness, pungent spring near to come, funerary markers beyond, from: ‘flags cluster’: the heart that has no long/pain/generosity is not a heart (fragments), between Kabul & Bamiyan, Afghanistan, 4/22/08
mounting the screen, stormy weather, at the border with Columbia where a boat load of Cuban refugees had been rescued and were resting on the grass, blue shrine, Playa Blanca, Panama, 1/26/15
blue slide spilled and soiled , pressure all around, the weight of histories, Cienfuegos, Cuba, 12/30/16
sorting, tableau, Hualien, Taiwan, 1/29/18
implements, tools of the trades - settler remnants, telling texts, pawn shop window shutters, Pigeon Park, Hastings and Carrall Streets, Downtown Eastside, Vancouver, 4/30/10
boom or bust , Gambier Island, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) territory, BC, 10/5/14
after the trip, 1/18/18
illusion , Camaguey, Cuba, 1/5/17
sky bright sky night first star I see tonight, celestial views etched into a red car hood, the ability of the abstract to bring one further into the scene, the setting, night sky, sub/urban setting of homes on top of Coast Salish (Musqueam/ Squamish/Tsleil-Waututh) land at or near sən’a?qw/Sen’ákw (Kitsalano reduced from August Jack Xats'alanexw/Khahtsahlano), Vancouver, 7/24/13
