Fugitive Archives: A spoken future (Dukkana)
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Dukkana is a pop-up event and community space for SWANA (Southwest Asia and North African) artists to share diasporic experiences, run by siblings, Safa El Samad and Fatima El Samad. Based at 99-101 Harding Street, Coburg.
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Majed Fayad is a Lebanese-Australian multidisciplinaryartist based in Melbourne/ Naarm. Fayad’s practice exploresthe intersection and overlap between Middle Easternand Western cultures, with a focus on nostalgia, heritage(identity), diaspora, and dreaming. His work envisions formsof Arab-Futurism through a diasporic lens that is bothutopian and dystopian.
Part two of A spoken future was presented at Dukkana, Coburg, with contemporary artist Majed Fayad presented alongside the original archive collection of The Great Book Return, de-centering institutional authority and inviting audiences into community andartist-led ways of working.
“Bringing together The Great Book Return and the Arab-futurist practice of Majed Fayad, this exhibition showcases a realistic understanding of injustice and oppression, with a firm belief in the possibility of a better future. By acknowledging the generations pastand present – their lived experiences of violence and occupation, and their perseverance and resistance – we create space where visitors can autonomously, and creatively, imagine their own memories, dreams and futures,” says Anna Emina.
Exhibited at Dukkana (18 October - 1 November 2025).
Supported by: Monash University Art, Design and Architecture School.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
Photography: Mischa Wang.
