Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, still from "Prisoners of Love", 2025. Courtesy of the artists
Exhibition
From 13 de February to 28 June 2026
Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme
Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom
coming soon
MACBA presents the first exhibition in Spain by the Palestinian artistic tandem Basel Abbas (1983, Nicosia, Cyprus) and Ruanne Abou-Rahme (1983, Boston, USA). Through the poetics of sound, image, text and performance, their practice probes into collective memory to explore stories of oppression, dispossession and violence, alongside narratives of collectivity and resilience.
The heart of the exhibition is a new immersive, multi-channel audiovisual installation, created specifically for the space, which investigates different forms of spectral presences and narration through song. This piece is the result of a co-production between MACBA, Nottingham Contemporary and Kunstinstituut Melly, and it will eventually become part of the MACBA Collection.
The work unpacks the artists’ extensive research into the songs and poems of incarcerated people. These ballads have transformed over the years from love songs to songs that express resistance and liberation, as well as a bond with the land. Songs of love become songs of resistance, and songs of resistance become songs of love.
Along with the installation, the exhibition presents earlier works that trace the genealogy of the tandem’s multidisciplinary research and practice.
Both artists live and work between New York and Ramallah and have been working together since 2007. They have presented solo exhibitions at institutions including Copenhagen Contemporary (2024); Astrup Fearnley Museet (2023); Museum of Modern Art (2022); The Common Guild, Glasgow (2022); Art Institute of Chicago (2021); Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2020); Kunstverein Hamburg (2018); and Art Jameel Project Space, Dubai (2017). Their work has also been part of major international biennials such as the Sharjah Biennial (2023, 2015); Berlin Biennale (2022); Busan Biennale (2018); Gwangju Biennale and São Paulo Biennale (both 2014); Istanbul Biennial (2013); Liverpool Biennial (2010); and Venice Biennale (2009).
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curated by
Hiuwai Chu
Hiuwai Chu is Head of Exhibitions and Curator at MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, where she has worked since 2007 as assistant curator and curator. She has curated exhibitions such as Bouchra Khalili: Between Circles and Constellations (2023); Panorama 21: Notes for an Eyer Fire (2021), Charlotte Posenenske: Work in Progress (2019), Undefined Territories: Perspectives on Colonial Legacies (2019), and Akram Zaatari. Against Photography: An Annotated History of the Arab Image Foundation (2017). She is co-editor of the book Climate: Our Right to Breath (K. Verlag, 2022). She is on the board of Hangar, an artist residency and center for research and production, and of Cordova, an independent curatorial project, both based in Barcelona. She was a member of the Editorial board of L’Internationale Online from 2021 – 2023. Before moving to Barcelona, Chu previously worked as associate editor at Aperture, New York. She studied anthropology at Barnard College, Columbia University.
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artists
1 artists
In collaboration with Nottingham Contemporary, The Bell / Brown Arts Institute, Brown University, and Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam.
MACBA Thirty
We celebrate Year Thirty of an infinite MACBA that projects the future as a space for revision and possibility: of taking up what was left unfinished, updating what needs it and projecting anew everything that can still be transformed.
