THE PROJECT SPACE

August 19—October 4, 2026

Phenomenological Alphabets considers language-building through the sensation of experiencing one’s being. What does language feel like from inside itself? How is language that emerges from the body able to seep, mutate, and come into creation? How does language begin as an interaction with material: sound and voice to create speech, or stick and stone to create a visual alphabet? And ultimately: how does a symbol meet its meaning?

For this exhibition, artist Aya Afaneh invites a dialogue with artists from her community whose practices have intersected, over time, with questions she explores in her own practice. Together, the works open a space to reflect on the nature of mark-making, language formation, and meaning. The material and poetic approaches of these artists invite the viewer to consider how these accumulated encounters might expand, morph, and complicate these curiosities.

The artists here approach these questions through different registers: Afaneh anchors the body as a tool of mark-making. The work of Sarah Brahim uses embodied gestures in choreography, while in the work of Andrew Riad, sound, body, and gesture become sites for deformation and reimagination. Yoonsik Chico Park looks to existing letter characters, where a sound and symbol can hold multiple meanings depending on context, use, and feeling. In the work of Sarah Afaneh, symbol-making becomes a way of recentering attention and transforming historical language, while Amir Hazim captures the body and reconstructs perception of movement.

Together, these practices explore how a gesture, sound, or mark might hold its own logic and interiority. Here, meaning does not necessarily precede the making: it can emerge through the body, sound, symbol, and material itself. Phenomenological Alphabets offers a shared yet non-unified field, where language is formed, encountered, and felt without requiring consensus.