Soul Stories: Life Is a Snake
A live storytelling and recording gathering with Refuge Worldwide Radio, Dina El Kaisy Friemuth, Maha El Kaisy, Ilaaf Khalfalla and Tmnit Ghide
SO 21.6, 15H ACUD Galerie
Free entrance

"My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite is deadly."
"Like a snake?"
"Yes, exactly like a snake."
— Nawal El Saadawi

Life Is a Snake is a new edition of Soul Stories, an ongoing storytelling format developed by Dina El Kaisy Friemuth and her mother, Maha El Kaisy. Presented in different forms and constellations over the years, Soul Stories creates a space where narratives, mythology and memory meet. At its centre is an exchange between mother and daughter that explores how stories travel across generations, how memory is preserved and transformed, and how inherited narratives shape our understanding of history, identity, belonging and social change.

This edition begins with the story of Isis, told by Maha El Kaisy.

The story also serves as an entry point into the work by the artist shown in the exhibition, where a portrait of her baby and the child's father draws inspiration from Isis rather than the more familiar iconography of Mary and Jesus.
Through the story of Isis, we will think with questions: How do we rebuild after fragmentation? How do we carry memory through displacement, loss, and political upheaval? What forms of knowledge have been erased from dominant histories, and what happens when we bring them back?

The story will unfold in the company of Ilaaf Khalfalla, a cultural researcher and artistic practitioner based between Berlin and Paris. Her work focuses on memory, archival silences, and the politics of representation, with a particular interest in Afro-diasporic histories in Germany and Sudan. She is interested in how history informs the present and how our relationship to the present reframes the past.

Also joining the gathering is Tmnit Ghide, a sound artist, researcher, cultural worker, radio host, and DJ. Through her practice, she explores sound as a socio-political archive, investigating the relationships between listening, memory, movement, and collective histories. Her work examines how sound can carry stories across time and space, creating new ways of connecting with cultural memory and lived experience.

Soul Stories is a live recording, to be broadcast at a later date and then archived at Refuge Worldwide, and storytelling gathering. Together, we will spend time with a story that continues to echo across cultures and generations.

Dina El Kaisy Friemuth, Maha El Kasiy, Tmnit Ghide and Ilaaf Khalfalla

Curated by Colette Paterson

Supported by Goethe-Institiut im Exil

ACUD Galerie is funded by the Basisförderung der Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt.