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Next Film/Video | Visiting Filmmakers | Contemporary Screen
Mona Gazala and Mandy Shunnarah in person
Preview | World Premiere
Free for all audiences
ACCESSIBILITY We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. If you have questions about accessibility or require an accommodation such as CART captioning or ASL interpretation to participate in this event, please email accessibility@wexarts.org or call (614) 688-3890. Requests made by two weeks in advance will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the Wexner Center for the Arts will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
Connect the dots between Ohio and Palestine at this screening of Ohio-based artist Mona Gazala’s newest project, featuring a live reading by local poet Mandy Shunnarah.
In her latest project, Gazala (of Gazala Projects) investigates how mechanisms of empires cross oceans and continents and embed themselves in the world around us. Join us for an intimate viewing of Trail Markers, a work-in-progress film that shows how Gazala herself encountered artifacts from Palestinian history in a rural Ohio museum. Described as “a winding path in unraveling the interconnected threads of empire and diaspora,” Trail Markers is still unfolding. Gazala will be inviting audience members to participate in the project after the screening in a Q&A moderated by Shunnarah. The screening will open with a poetry reading by Shunnarah, a Columbus poet. (work in progress, digital video)
IMAGE CAPTIONTrail Markers, courtesy of the artist.
Mona Gazala is a Palestinian American artist living in west central Ohio. She holds a MA in studio arts with a specialization in city/regional planning from Ohio State. Her multidisciplinary and socially engaged practice explores and exposes dynamics of power and systems of oppression that often manifest in the built environment. This includes what is visible and what has been erased in structures, neighborhoods, and geographies. Gazala is the recipient of numerous grants from the Ohio Arts Council, Greater Columbus Arts Council, Franklinton Arts District, Puffin Foundation West, Ohio Alliance for Arts Education, Decapital, and the Hishmeh Foundation to undertake creative work centered on community building, social justice, and activism.
Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is an Alabama-born Appalachian and Palestinian-American writer who calls Columbus, Ohio, home. Their essays, poetry, and short stories have been published in the New York Times, Electric Literature, Rumpus, and others. They are the winner of the Porter House Review 2024 Editor’s Prize in Poetry and are supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Sundress Academy for the Arts. Their first book, Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland, was released in July 2024 from Belt Publishing, and their second book, a poetry collection titled We Had Mansions, is forthcoming from Diode Editions in 2025. Read more at mandyshunnarah.com.
FILM/VIDEO PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY National Endowment for the Arts Ohio Humanities
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY Rohauer Collection Foundation
WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY Greater Columbus Arts Council The Wexner Family Institute of Museum and Library Services Mellon Foundation Every Page Foundation Ohio Arts Council, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts CampusParc Nationwide Foundation Ohio State’s Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme The Columbus Foundation Axium Packaging
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY Ohio State Energy Partners Ohio History Fund/Ohio History Connection David Crane and Elizabeth Dang Melissa Gilliam and William Grobman Rebecca Perry Damsen and Ben Towle
Next Film/Video
Trail Markers