Q & A: Christina Hajjar
Discussing the aesthetics of queer diaspora and the everyday.
Christina Hajjar, “Don't Forget the Water,” 2021
video, 4:41 min. (courtesy the artist)
Christina Hajjar, curatorial intern at the School of Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba, is developing community by engaging in queer diasporic discourse. For cause to become, which can be viewed by appointment until May 14, she brings together four queer artists from different cultural backgrounds whose work focuses on themes of diaspora. The exhibition celebrates difference while connecting through the artists’ shared experience.
Christina Hajjar
Hajjar, a first-generation Lebanese-Canadian, is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and curator whose work often focuses on food, diaspora and archives. In her recent exhibition, Don’t Forget to Count Your Blessings, at Winnipeg’s Platform Gallery, Hajjar recreated a hookah bar to emphasize the cultural significance of the establishments at a critical time – they are closed now in Winnipeg due to COVID-19 restrictions and there’s talk of banning them completely due to concerns over public health and workplace safety.
Hajjar holds degrees from the University of Winnipeg in business administration and women and gender. During her studies, she wrote a column for the student newspaper, The Uniter, called Feeding Diaspora. It examined food culture through a queer feminist lens. Along with Winnipeg artists Luther Konadu and Mariana Muñoz Gomez, Hajjar is a co-founder of Carnation Zine, which brings together BIPOC artists and writers to explore themes related to diaspora and displacement. She recently published a solo zine, Diaspora Daughter, Diaspora Dyke.
Winnipeg writer Lindsay Inglis spoke with Christina Hajjar by Zoom in April. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
“cause to become,” 2021
installation view at School of Art Gallery, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg (photo by Karen Asher)
Could you talk to me about your curatorial process and the importance of building relationship within that process?
Well, I’m very new at curating. My other curatorial projects were group projects with Window Gallery and Flux Gallery. I really like working collaboratively. When I got this job at the School of Art Gallery, I was feeling kind of untethered and intimidated to work alone. At the time, I was in the MAWA mentorship program with Nasrin Himada. They’re a curator, so I had the opportunity to hear them talk many times about what curating means to them and how to engage in an ethical curatorial practice through a lens of care. This principle really guided me in trying to figure out how I wanted to curate. I want to build meaningful relationships that don’t rely on institutions – for the relationships and the creative projects created through institutions to be grounded in community and relational practices, more so than an emphasis on capitalist productivity or institutional gain.
Whess Harman, “skipping stones,” 2021
vinyl (courtesy of the artist; photo by Karen Asher)
The show you curated, cause to become, brings together four artists from four different cultural backgrounds – Whess Harman, Mariana Muñoz Gomez, Florence Yee and Hagere Selam (shimby) Zegeye-Gebrehiwot. Did you encounter any challenges while creating a transcultural dialogue?
I think the most challenging part was that even though these works are brought together because of some similarity, in this case queer diaspora, I don’t want to suggest that the works are synonymous with one another, or that experiences with queer diaspora are similar. I also don’t want to overly align myself with someone else’s art. I dealt with that by understanding the intention and context of each work, and by having conversations with the artists about what it means to them. And then, when I brought my own understanding onto it, I asked them: Does this sit right with you?
Queer diaspora is made up of a multiplicity of experiences, and through this joint struggle we support each other through difference. Learning about feminism has taught me that as well. At first, when you come into feminism there’s this rhetoric that you can cling onto that we’re all the same and we all deserve equality. But when you learn about intersectionality and how our experiences are different, then you can learn how to understand the idea of joint struggle and supporting each other in our difference.
It was also important to understand the boundaries of art-making as well. Especially when it comes to identity-based art, there are purposeful layers of boundaries. For example, in shimby’s video they purposefully decided not to have English translation to the Amharic audio. I think an important part of bringing together a transcultural exhibition is that I need to be mindful and intentional in what is shared with me, how I engage with the work, and how I speak about the work.
Florence Yee, “PROOF—Bedroom in Scarborough,” 2021
hand embroidered thread on cotton voile print (courtesy of the artist; photo by Karen Asher)
What does diaspora, and specifically queer diaspora, mean to you?
Diaspora means to me that because of war, I don’t live in Lebanon. Diaspora basically just means that you’re living away from your homeland. So when I think of diaspora, I also think of state violence, misuse of power and coercion. The main word for me is displacement. My family was displaced from Lebanon and, because of that, I didn’t get to grow up there. Diaspora is a longing. It’s also a generative space, and I think that’s where queer diaspora comes in for me.
I really feel that queerness is a blessing. Queerness has taught me that we create the everyday, and that queer futures are made up of this sense of fluidity in how we view our bodies, our communities, our sexualities and our relationships, in general. Queerness has always been to me about rebellion and anti-authoritarianism. When I bring queerness and diaspora together, it feels to me like a homecoming, like a place to transform legacies of violence and my own family histories. To me, queer diaspora is open and poetic and hopeful. Diaspora is a relentless sense of disorientation and displacement, and queerness feels like a methodology to grapple with those feelings. I immediately feel more connected to other people who live in queer diaspora.
Mariana Muñoz Gomez, “Recorrer, to wander,” 2019
series of four CMYK screen prints (courtesy of artist; photo by Karen Asher)
You’ve discussed the roots that form when engaging with other queer diasporic artists, and how it creates an invaluable site for becoming. Would you consider the process of creating this exhibition an act of becoming? And do you hope the exhibition itself will be a site of becoming for viewers?
Yeah, definitely. These methodologies are just forms of research, so I think that writing, curating and artmaking all do those things. That’s why I feel so strongly about being multidisciplinary. I think that I learned just as much about this exhibition through the process of studio visits, curation and writing. I think of writing as a sort of untangling, a way to process and really understand what it is that you’re doing. Each artwork does something different, and I had to learn how to juggle the conceptual intentions and aesthetic qualities of each work to figure out how they would make sense together. This process of figuring that out is a process of becoming, as well. I understand Dr. Gayatri Gopinath’s idea of becoming as that through these aesthetic practices we process internally and then we make those processes visible through art. I think that art and curation are actually really similar, and although they’re different methodologies, they accomplish a similar sense of becoming. While curation is not as autobiographical for me, it’s still intensely meaningful and personal.
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Christina Hajjar, “Diaspora Daughter / Diaspora Dyke,” 2020
zine, 40 pages (courtesy the artist)
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Christina Hajjar, "Diaspora Daughter / Diaspora Dyke," 2020
zine, 40 pages (courtesy the artist)
You mention how you like to work collaboratively. Have these collaborative experiences helped you to find your own place within queer diaspora?
Yes, community is all about relationality, and therefore identity is about relationality. In order to make work that stems from my experience and my identity, I need to understand my identity in relation to other people. When you work collaboratively with other people you get to understand their perspective, which is based on their lived experience and their identity. You then have to understand what you think and why, and you have to learn to express that to other people. From there, you get to engage in a philosophical conversation about art, which to me is just as fun as art-making. I think relationships are really meaningful because the art world is already steeped in white supremacy and capitalism. These systems work to isolate us and, to me, working in collaboration is a resistance to those systems.
The exhibition cause to become was influenced by Gayatri Gopinath’s book, Unruly Visions, which emphasizes how the aesthetics of queer diaspora can be seen in the everyday, what Gopinath refers to as “history without a capital H.” Is this everydayness something you wanted to encapsulate in cause to become?
Yeah, I originally intended for the exhibition to be formed around the idea of dwellings, because to me this process of becoming is about everydayness and home. When I read Gayatri’s book, I felt more drawn to the idea of states of suspension. I feel that states of suspension are a way to express the generative productiveness of being in liminality, and that the way she describes productive suspension validates diaspora, not as a stuck place but as a generative space.
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Christina Hajjar, "Don't Forget to Count Your Blessings," 2021
detail of installation at Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts, Winnipeg (courtesy of the artist; photo by Tayler Buss)
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Christina Hajjar, "Don't Forget to Count Your Blessings," 2021
detail of installation at Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts, Winnipeg (courtesy of the artist)
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Christina Hajjar, "Don't Forget to Count Your Blessings," 2021
detail of installation at Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts, Winnipeg (courtesy of the artist; photo by Tayler Buss)
How is your own artwork influenced by the everyday?
One of the entry points of art-making for me was food practice and thinking about how food is geographic, political, performative and historical. My practice started off with me recording my mom’s recipes in the kitchen. She would cook and I would record the recipe, since she doesn’t use measurements at all, and I would then try to create the recipe myself. I saw that as an artistic process in itself and I felt really strongly about this archiving practice. Even though I didn’t know what my art practice was or what I wanted it to look like, I knew food was important and archiving my mom’s body memory is the most worthwhile thing that I could be doing.
I also learned about the critique that is up against diasporic artists who lean on food too heavily or who end up tokenizing themselves. I initially felt a little bit defensive of that criticism, but then took that as a learning point for how I would use food in my art practice. Food can feel like an approachable way to talk about culture, although I think that there’s something about white people embracing ‘ethnic’ food, but not people of colour.
In Don’t Forget to Count Your Blessings, the video work is me making coffee, and the audio piece is a conversation with me and my mom discussing how to make coffee. I’ve drunk Arabic coffee so many times, but I hadn’t made it by myself at home. The sound piece is so funny for me because I know she’s losing her patience, and things that seem obvious are hard to put into coherent instructions for me. It shows you how embodied these knowledges are, and it’s not something you can just extract.
The wallpaper in the show included coffee cups, as well. For me there’s something really exciting about the repetition of imagery that creates a pattern and I think that has to do with ritual and everydayness. These practices become a form of healing, of cultural connection, and of nourishment in the face of diasporic disorientation and displacement.
Along with Unruly Visions, do you have any book recommendations?
Yes. The next book that I’m going to revisit is Cruising Utopia by José Esteban Muñoz. The concept that queerness is not yet here is so similar to Gayatri’s idea of becoming, and so that’s a natural next place to go.
It’s not out yet, but I’m really looking forward to Treat Me Like Your Mother: Trans* Histories From Beirut's Forgotten Past. That has portraits, images and stories of Lebanese trans women in Beirut. I’m looking forward to that so that I can better understand both my diasporic and queer lineage.
I want to re-visit Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. It’s a perfect dystopian story to read during the pandemic and I think it’s a really interesting novel about empathy, as well.
And the last one I’ll say is The January Children by Safia Elhillo. She’s one of my favorite poets. ■
Correction May 7, 2021, 12:10 p.m. An earlier version of this article erroneously stated that Treat Me Like Your Mother: Trans* Histories From Beirut's Forgotten Past was about a Lebanese trans woman. In fact, the book tells the stories of 11 trans women. The post has been updated to reflect this.
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