Ahla friends,
I'm not what we can call a soccer fan. But I have to hand it to this sport: no politics, no religion, no cult I've watched has created the unity and faith this World Cup has created. People are finding joy even when their team loses…the simple fact of being here, surrounded by others, is its own win.
I keep watching the rooms more than the matches. Whole bars going down together on a goal and somehow leaving lighter for it. Strangers in jerseys hugging strangers. Boroughs unified by ninety minutes. It's truly beautiful to witness.
And us, this community of ours that was long divided for no right reason, cheering the same teams whether these teams are from our countries of origin or not. We are more and more unified, and it's just heartwarming.
Samar
THE SHORTLIST
The Ones Worth Your Time
MUSIC
An R&B/Soul Experience W Joey Joseph
Wed - June 24, July 1, July 8, 9:45 PM
Da Milio, NoLita
Joey is a Lebanese singer-songwriter with a soulful voice and a deep love for live performance. Truly into Soul and R&B, his shows are built around atmosphere and emotion.
WELLNESS
A Summer Solstice Ritual: City Edition
Thursday, June 25th, 6 PM
Bhakti Marga, Chelsea
House of Leyli and Ziba Skincare host a Tirgan-inspired gathering for the solstice, Persian tea meditation, a reflection circle, hydration rituals, and a curated gift bag valued north of $150. Tirgan honors water and abundance. I will be there so come say hi.
MUSIC
Bayou
Friday, June 26th, 7–10 PM
The Meadows, Williamsburg
Full disclosure, I donno who Bayou is but I was told that he had many fans within our community so here you go, he is coming. there is also an after party scheduled (details on the website under its own link and event)
COMEDY
Hanan Issa: Halal Habibis
Saturday, June 27th, 4–5:30 PM
Caveat, Lower East Side
Lebanese-American comedian working through her mother's death at nine, religion, dating, and what it means to grow up Muslim in New York.
CINEMA
3 movies from Meriem Bennani: 2 Lizards + Culturesport: Rotterdam 95 + Bochra (+ Q&A)
2 Lizards : Sat June 27th, 7–8 PM
Bochra: June 26-July 2d
Metrograph, LES
Multihyphenate artists who span the gap between the white cube of the gallery and the black box of the cinema, Barki and Bennani (I’m a fan!), already staples at major museums and biennials around the globe, gained an even wider audience with their pandemic-era web series about two gossipy reptiles in lockdown New York City, 2 Lizards, and continue to explore anthropomorphized autobiography with their debut animated feature drama, Bouchra, a selection at last year’s New York Film Festival. Q&A on June 26 + 27th
THEATER
Omeed's Tapestries
June 29th – July 10th (talkback July 9)
American Theatre of Actors, Hell's Kitchen
Barry M. Putt Jr.'s award-winning drama: an Iranian shopkeeper and his partner plan to flee their country to live openly as a same-sex couple, until a devout neighbor discovers their secret and threatens everything. What happens when love and survival collide.
COMEDY
Redouane Bougheraba In French
Monday, June 29th, 8–9:30 PM
Iron Bar & Lounge, Hell's Kitchen
A niche one for our French-speaking friends 🙂 Redouane is a French-Algerian comedian known for his sharp humor and unapologetic style. Hilarious, chaotic, and definitely not a family-friendly night out, you’ve been warned.
THE FREE ONE
Free and Delightful
DANCE
Rachid Ouramdane / Compagnie de Chaillot: TORDRE
Saturday, June 27th
Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center
French-Algerian choreographer Rachid Ouramdane brings TORDRE to Alice Tully, an intimate duet built around atypical bodies, and what virtuosity actually means once you let go of the inherited definition. Part of Lincoln Center's inaugural Contemporary Dance Festival.
THIS WEEK DISCOVERY
Cool Initiative To Experience
Leila Heller Gallery: A SWANA Art Gallery In the heart of Chelsea
Leila Heller arrived in New York at seventeen, in 1979, with the revolution behind her and a plan she could no longer execute. She'd trained to work at Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art, the museum that was supposed to be her future, and instead found herself in a city where Andy Warhol once mistook her for a Persian princess at a party. (She was, in some ways, exactly that. Bourgeois Tehran, parents who collected art, a childhood spent moving through fine-art rooms.) Three years later, in 1982, she opened her gallery on Madison Avenue (then moved to Chelsea).
She built one of New York's earliest commercial spaces to take Middle Eastern artists seriously as contemporary practice, not ethnography, nor the museum-basement category. She started with an international roster (American, European, Latin American) and pulled in the SWANA artists who were her own circle, exiled in Paris and London, working in private, unrepresented in the West. She published Shirin Neshat's catalogue The Mask and the Mirror.
In 2015 she opened the Dubai location, the largest gallery in the Middle East at the time. The point wasn't real estate; it was infrastructure. You can't critique a Western market that ignores SWANA artists without building somewhere it can't.
Three shows are up now at the New York space:
Kevork Mourad: The Echoes of Silent Bells (through July 5): Syrian artist whose drawings and performances trace memory, erasure, the unsaid. He's known for live-drawing alongside orchestras; this is the still version.
Atieh Sohrabi, Farshid Shafiey, Baran Shafiey: All in the Family (through July 5): three Iranian artists from one family. Exactly what it sounds like, and as interesting than you'd expect.
Sultan Bin Fahad: Blue Note (through September 13): Saudi artist working at the intersection of cultural memory and contemporary form. The longest-running show of the season. (note: it feels like every artists is working on memory these days)
Go on a slow afternoon. It's free. You'll see work you can't see anywhere else in this city, in a room built by someone who understood what was missing decades before our streets started catching up.
Samar
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