With NÂR, yris, Ni Daodao 倪島島 , FU CONG LE 付丛乐, rami shalati, Noor Abed, Noor Abuarefeh, Nour Ouayda, Jade Escrivá, Embodied Sonorities, and Tasneem Hozaien.
Exhibition
25. Sept – 18. Oct 2026
Open Saturdays 15:00–19:00
Program
25. Sept, 18:00 Vernissage
19:00 Read the Room - Performance by NÂR
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27. Sept, 16:00 Third Cinema Club
A Night We Held Between - Noor Abed, 2024, 30’
Towards the Sun - Nour Ouyada, 2019, 17’
Memory of the Salt - Noor Aburafeh, 2025, 11’
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6. Oct, 18:00 Food Tuesday
Burning my stories, Arepas hosted by Jade Escrivá
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9. Oct, 18:30 Open Mic
Storytelling and listening session with the collective Embodied Sonorities
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15. Oct, 19:00 Performance
Before Burnout by FU CONG LE 付丛乐 and Ni Daodao 倪島島
Images of fire surround us. Fire is what ignites, what transforms, what cooks, what enlightens and warms. It also burns and barrens, making space for loss and violence as much as for anew. Ambivalent within the scope of human perspectives, fire embodies both life and destruction.
What happens after something burns?
The exhibition BURNT explores fire in its potential for destruction and renewal. We imagine that what is left after flames are extinguished has a different chemistry on the space matter, a different smell, a change in views, and the potential for a different kind of growth.
Around us, we observe many cultural workers, friends, navigating sickness, fatigue, and precarity shaped by personal limits as well as systemic pressures. Communities exhaust, and solidarious ties get burned as well. Fire speaks to this reality: it can consume, but it can also spark collective warmth, urgency, and renewal. The theme resonates with the lunar year of the Fire Horse, displayed on the fabric illustrated by Tasneem Hozaien, whose energy we read as fierce, intuitive, and life-affirming, reminding us that what fuels us (our practices, our communities, our relationships) needs sustained care and concrete structures.
As part of the exhibition, Ni Daodao 倪島島 and FU CONG LE 付丛乐 present their poetic approach to body and personal trauma. In their work Before Burnout, they ask: Can a shell burned in fire through the night return to what it was before? / Can a fractured body ever be restored to what it once was? Their work draws attention to sound, scent, and taste as ways of slowing down and returning to the body. Through a sensory-led performance and its materialized relics on the window display of Les Complices*, CONG LE and Daodao unsettle the linear movement from burnout toward recovery.
Tasneem Hozaien’s illustration printed on fabric was first commissioned by Les Complices* to be the framing piece of our installation part of the Swiss Arts Awards in May 2026. Tasneem’s practice as space designer took on the task of blending our stories and collective processes into the creation of a burnt-looking protective membrane within the huge frame that the SAA is. The illustration responds to our ongoing conversation about being, in the words of tracy september: new, excited, and appropriately afraid. In trying to position ourselves as a women-of-color-run space and as we progressively come to understand and problematize the connections that LC* continues to create within and out of Zürich, our team has encountered a diverse set of challenges. From issues of accessibility in the space to developing awareness concepts that are inclusive but also have a clear political positioning. From mitigating cultural and ideological clashes within our community, to providing appropriate financial support and compensation for participants, and most importantly, practicing intentional community building. With such questions, we continue to reflect on the kind of events, projects, and people we want to support within the privilege of running an independent art space. On top of the question of collective strategies and modes of survival, there is also the question of care. We observe ourselves and other practitioners surrounding us on the verge of burnout. How to provide a supportive space for people after fire?
For this second iteration of BURNT, Tasneem’s fabric is intervened by the stitching work of rami shalati. rami ‘s artistic practice uses textiles in installations and performances that deal with post-migrant queer storytelling. The motifs of hands and eyes that rami carefully and heartfully stitched on these burnt-looking fabric pieces, insinuate spaces to acknowledge what has been exhausted while remaining attentive to what continues to glow as embers, however faintly. The work is called العين بصيره واليد قصيره ‚al-ayn Basira, wal -yad qasira‘‚The eyes can see far but the hands are too short to reach‘ 2024 - 2026.
Artist and political scientist yris presents: there's (obviously) an issue, a hanging mobile composed of many small ceramic objects that are part of a therapeutic process to connect to wind and ancestry, as well as to understand and survive present precarious conditions. yris writes: from / deep inside / that what burns/needs air. Rather than seeking to extinguish difficulty, yris explores exhaustion and grief, processed by her own hands while sculpting the clay and while tying the knots that eventually create more complex and non-linear connections, moving in the air.
One last reflection coming from our archives, relevant after our experience in the Swiss Arts Awards:
“We need spaces that allow us to practice transformation internally, in our relationships, and in our larger communities. We need spaces that honor and celebrate our diverse ways of being and knowing. We need space to embrace the messy and nonlinear - recognising that change is often messy, nonlinear, and unpredictable. We must be willing to adapt, experiment, and learn from failure as we navigate the complexities of running this space.” —tracy september, 2023
Les Complices*: Anwandstrasse 9, 8004 Zürich.
Supported by Kanton Zürich, Stadt Zürich, and Temperatio-Stiftung
