Dialogues 4: Leyya Mona Tawil aka Lime Rickey International

Presented in co-operation with Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture.

Dialogues: A Conversation and Performance is a series of events in which we invite someone to discuss their creative process and present an aspect or aspects of their work. For this edition we present artist and curator Leyya Mona Tawil aka Lime Rickey International. Leyya will be interviewed by Dr. Michael A. Figueroa.

Leyya Mona Tawil [Lime Rickey International] is an artist, curator, and cultural activist. She works in sound art, dance, and hybrid transmissions. Tawil is a Syrian, Palestinian, American engaged in the world as such. Her works have toured throughout Europe, the Arab region, and the US. As 'Lime Rickey International', Tawil has been commissioned by Abrons Arts Center (NYC), New Performance Turku (Finland), KONE Foundation (Helsinki), ZVRK Festival (Bosnia), Serendipity Arts Festival (Goa), Fire Museum Presents (Philadelphia), Arab American National Museum (Dearborn) and was nominated for a 2019 “Bessies” Award in Music (NYC). She is the director of Arab.AMP - a platform for experimental music, live art, and ideas from the SWANA diaspora and allied communities. Tawil is on the curatorial team of the Arab American National Museum (Dearborn), Southern Exposure Gallery (SF), Daring Dances (Ann Arbor), Al Bustan Seeds of Culture (Philly) and was the 2020 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow at ISSUE Project Room and is now a member of their Artistic Advisory Council. She is also the director of TAC Temescal Art Center in Oakland, California.

Michael A. Figueroa (he/him) is a US-born Syrian + Puerto Rican ethnomusicologist, writer, and professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He researches the arts (broadly defined) in the SWANA region and its diasporas. He has published books and articles on subjects ranging from the modern history of Jerusalem, music and trauma, Iberian poetry, and Arab American aesthetics, among other subjects. At present, he is writing a book on race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary Arab American performance. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2014.

venue is wheelchair accessible