Title

Bachelor degree design

Bachelor degree fine arts

Master degree fine arts and design

Coordinator

Espacio Estamos Bien

Art Director

Ediciones Rocas Shop

Design

Francisca Khamis Giacoman

Caer Ascendiendo

Rosebud #6: As Close As I Get

 Ways of going back

Caer Ascendiendo (Fall Ascending) is a 20-minute performance where two performers unfold an object in response to a set of instructions. Embedded within these instructions is the unfolding of a story—the narrative of my family’s migration from Palestine to Chile, highlighting its connection to the textile industry, specifically through the creation of a parachute. This parachute was crafted by my father and brother and sent to me as a package earlier this year. 
The performance took place at Extra City in Antwerp, Belgium, serving as the launching point for my residency at BAU. During this residency, I had the time and space to cultivate additional collaborations related to the Caer Ascendiendo project. The performance was initially presented in a work-in-progress state, with five additional performers joining in the movements around the unfolding parachute. The informal atmosphere of an open studio gradually transformed into a more poetic and abstract one. Simultaneously, the room underwent a gradual transformation, incorporating added lights and sounds, culminating in a scene that transcended the studio space, creating a dreamlike ambiance.
Excerpt from exhibition text by Adriënne van der Werf and Josue Aliendre Carvani
A second package prevailing from Chile is setting the foundation for a new chapter of Francisca Khamis Giacoman’s research on the diasporic memory. Following the performative procedure; the package becomes a vessel for speculation. However this ‘curiosity’ holds the potential to build a bridge allowing the expansion and unfolding of several plains of existence.
Once unveiled, the contents - a set of various items produced by her grandfather, father and brother as part of the family’s business - became material proof of a diasporic existence and trace a familial lineage that spans centuries and generations. The item on display - the parachute - is the genesis of her family’s migration story. In 1948, her ancestors, after their arrival in Chile, worked repairing and patching up damaged clothes. Their craft evolved into an artistry that was passed down by generations. Thus the form and materiality of ‘the parachute’ become a symbolic representation of an ‘in-between’; a state of continuous transition.
By unfolding, unpacking, expanding, and contracting, Francisca Khamis Giacoman and a fellow performer allow ‘the parachute’ to envelop and consume the chapel space at Kunshal Extra City. Dictated by a set of instructions based on imprecise recollections and assumptions; ‘the parachute’ never truly finds the same form and it struggles to be kept contained.

Fall Ascending

Text from Het Nieuwe Instituut
In this new video work, 31°42&#8217;49.5&#8221;N 35°10&#8217;13.9&#8221;E by Francisca Khamis Giacoman she revisits the remnants of her family home in Al-Makhrour in Palestine that is inaccessible to her family.
Khamis Giacoman interweaves fact, fiction, histories and memories to reconstruct the house that lives on as a ghost in her family’s oral tradition. How are spaces that we cannot reach represented? And is there something in not knowing that opens a space to new possibilities? 
The work follows the installation As Close As I Get, that was part of the Nieuwe Instituut exhibition Temporary House of Home. In that installation she traced the floorplan of the house and activated the space with a series of performances. This video essay is part of a series of contributions by various designers and artists that Nieuwe Instituut asked to reflect from a design perspective on persisting structures of colonisation and extraction. 
Francisca Khamis Giacoman Francisca Khamis Giacoman’s recent works deal with fragmented diasporic memories. In performances and installations, she recollects stories of migration and unfolds them at the boundaries of fiction and materiality. Her video and sound works use family archives to focus on the solidification of in-between identities. Recently she co-founded Espacio Estamos Bien, an art cooperative based in Amsterdam that organises gatherings, publications and exhibitions.

31°42'49.5"N 35°10'13.9"E

<a href="https://www.biblioteka.website/events/2022/10-21-lava-lines/">Lava Lines</a> explores the life forms, contemporary myths and geopolitical powers that shape volcanic landscapes. Portals to an underworld of almost limitless energy production, volcanic environments are also the seat of ancestral practices. Lava Lines gathers texts, visual and sonic formats to touch on collective memory, non-human agency and myth-making.
Khamis Giacoman`s piece “Pillan” reflects on the possibilities of the natural disasters in Chile, and played with 2 words: Pillán: Mapuche word; Mystical union of the spirit with the soul. Light that emerges from the volcanoes. And the word “Pillan”, from the Spanish verb pillar: to reach the other, to catch unprepared, to understand. Khamis Giacoman makes a text and recording that are worked by Mika Oki to create a soundpiece that is on a loop during the exhibition. For the closing event of the show, Francisca will perform a reading of the text.

Pillan

Espacio Estamos Bien is an art cooperative* based in Amsterdam, that facilitates gatherings, publications, exhibitions, and other formats. EEB started by plotting around the idea of a new space in Amsterdam –not necessarily a physical one– that could provide an affective and supporting context. A space for those who do not belong in the institutional circuit. A space that is always changing, always moving, but always available. EEB is an initiator of conversations and facilitator of situations. EEB was founded by Mariana Jurado Rico and Francisca Khamis Giacoman.
*Cooperative: autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to form a democratic organization whose administration and management must be carried out in a manner agreed by the members.
For more information about Espacio Estamos Bien, please see our instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/espacioestamosbien/">@espacioestamosbien</a> 
Or contact us at <a href="mailto:&#x65;&#x73;&#x70;&#x61;&#99;&#105;&#x6f;&#x65;&#115;&#x74;&#97;&#x6d;&#111;&#x73;&#98;&#x69;&#101;&#x6e;&#x40;&#x67;&#109;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#46;&#99;&#x6f;&#x6d;">espacioestamosbien@gmail.com</a>

<a href="https://tijdelijkhuisvanthuis.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/en/activities/close-i-get">tijdelijkhuisvanthuis.hetnieuweinstituut.nl</a>
For the second in the Home of Your Own series of installations, which is part of the Temporary House of Home exhibition, Francisca Khamis Giacoman presents As Close As I Get. Through regular ongoing performances or ‘activations’ during the exhibition period, she will continue to develop the work. Materiality, ephemerality and access play a central part in her practice and relationship with home. 
Coming from the Palestinian diaspora in Chile, Khamis Giacoman explores memories as traces of silenced narratives. She records and reconstructs stories of a home that lives on as a ghost in her family’s oral tradition. As Close As I Get documents a failed visit to the house, still standing in Al-Makhrour in Palestine, but inaccessible to her family. A video merges Khamis Giacoman’s own journey to the house with the memories recalled by her great-aunt Labibe. To regain access and keep the memory of the house alive, Khamis Giacoman traces its floorplan in a series of performances or activations. A set of steps reconstructs a part of the house and invites the visitor to rest. 
The video work was also showed separately at Rialto VU, Rialto, PuntWG and Rozenstraat, Amstedam, The Netherlands, 2022
Fragment from the curatorial text at Rozenstraat: 
Full text <a href="https://www.rozenstraat.com/event/rosebud-6-francisa-khamis-giacoman/">here</a> 
The work of Francisca Khamis Giacoman has been largely informed by her diasporic identity. In her videos, performances and workshops she seeks for a perpetuation of connections to places, experiences and people both from her and her ancestors’ past. Through the usage of different visual languages, ranging from veiled, poetic and documentary, Khamis Giacoman explores the values and possibilities of the (oral) transmission and reproduction of memories, while acknowledging their irrevocable loss and the gap that eventually emerges between an imagined past and a present reality. Central in the artist’s oeuvre is her interest in an in-between state or border consciousness, which arises when one’s roots lie elsewhere, and specifically in the potentialities and the sense of agency this state offers; a fluid, changing identity. Rosebud #6: Francisca Khamis Giacoman presents two video works that touch upon longing, intergenerational transmissions of memories, belonging and place attachment.
The video As close as I get (2021) can be understood as a continuation, or a counterpart, of the performance As far as I can remember (2021). In this performance Khamis Giacoman reconstructs the layout of her family house in Palestine by drawing it in full size on the floor while listening to and retelling the stories of her great aunt Labibe. This way she outlines the possibilities to connect with the past, not only on the basis of (her) memory, but also through the body and language. Planting the space elsewhere, wandering through the imaginary rooms and internalizing the memories of Labibe enables fresh, alternative shapes of the memories of this house, while its legacy is fortified every time it is performed or seen. 
Where the performance stems from a quest to revive the past by a bodily experience and an imaginary space, the video As close as I get is based on an actual revisit of the location of the family house in Al-Makhrour, Palestine. Filmed in a style somewhere in between a visual poem and a documentary, we follow the artist in her attempt to find, and then approach, this mythical home, which is neither easy nor harmless given the political situation. Guided by an old photo of the house and the numerous stories she heard, Khamis Giacoman nears the house that settled in her and in her family’s imagination. By holding its legacy up to the light of reality, it becomes clear that this paradisiacal place is incompatible with the here and now. Similar to the past, the house remains closed.
Link to the documentation video of the performance <a href="https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/744381219">here</a> 
Link to the video work <a href="https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/708702121">here</a>

As Close As I Get

<a href="https://vimeo.com/708702121">See full video here</a> 
 
The video As close as I get (2021) shows the visit to my family&#8217;s home, a place that until this point I had only known through family stories. The house is located in Palestine, in Area C of the West Bank where Israel exercises civilian and military control and it is threatened with its disappearance by settlements that are being illegally constructed. 
In my attempt to find, and then approach, this mythical home, I am guided by an old photo of the house, holding my legacy up to the light of reality, where it becomes clear that this paradisiacal place is incompatible with the here and now. Similar to the past, the house remains closed.
This became a point of departure for a continuous research that would be embodied in various projects, taking shape in installation performances, video poems, and texts, that together become a journey within various investigations into the desire and perhaps the impossibility of grasping, archiving, reconstructing, and understanding the fragile stories and experiences of what makes up a personal and uprooted identity.

As close as I get #2

“Thought draws the imaginary of the past: a knowledge becoming. One cannot stop it to assess it nor isolate it to transmit it. It is sharing one can never not retain, nor ever, in standing still, boast about.“ 
Edouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation
Transmission, translation, traces, loss. In an attempt to remember a house that lives on as a ghost in her family’s memory, Francisca Khamis Giacoman looks for ways of keeping the house alive, a house in motion, now in another shape, without time or territory. In the performance, As far as I can remember, Francisca repeatedly draws the floor plan of this house and memorizes the stories told by the ones who lived there. The performance reveals the fragility of the media, and the interrelations between memory, body, and space. Uniting past and present, singularity and multiplicity, temporal currents flow through the work as it appears and disappears throughout the three days of the exhibition.

As Far As I Can Remember

“The ‘L’ of the lips are open 
The ‘O’ of the host 
The ‘V’ of the velvet 
The ‘E’ of my eye 
The eye in wonder 
The eye that sees 
The ‘I’ that loves you”
(Kate Bush, Why Should I Love You?)
On the 1st of November 2020, not so punctually at 11:11, an heartfelt marriage happened between Levi van Gelder and Francisca Khamis Giacoman. 
With a small group of guests but a large crowd of people tuning in via livestream from both hemispheres, we celebrated the notion of love in a joyous ceremony. 
Through reflecting on the in-betweenness of our love relationship (boundless, fluid, unconditional), but also on all other types of love unrepresented in the institute of marriage (restricted, solid, and loaded with conditions and consequences), we seek to reclaim and re-appropriate the namesake and bureaucratic benefits of marriage to conform to their way of being, living and loving.

The Wedding

In both videos, I use the recontextualization of narratives through images from my personal archive, which I have been building over time. These pieces arise from my process of revisiting this archive and its reinterpretation through texts and songs, giving rise to new ways of seeing, looking, and understanding. Both videos address themes of loss and forgetfulness, showing how an archive is not meant to freeze reality but to be used subjectively in creating images that inform in various ways.
Exhibition text by Serpentina López
For the present exhibition, Ways of going back, Francisca Khamis presents two video works made from footage she recorded during a trip to the USA in 2018. Through the shaky lense of a handycam, she visited iconic, massively visited sightseeing places.
In Ways of going home, even more impressed by the colossal amount of people than by the indomitable force of nature, Khamis takes a contemplative look down to the ships that bring tourists closer to the Niagara Falls. Presented on a split screen, we see on each side extremely zoomed-in, almost abstract images of visitors agglomerated on the deck of the ferries, uniformed in blue and red plastic raincoats.
Based on text fragments of the homonymous novel by chilean poet and writer Alejandro Zambra, Khamis subtitles the wordless sounds with childhood notions of getting lost and feeling home, placing us somewhere between memory and dream.
Riding a boat towards the Statue of Liberty, in No te olvides de mí it’s now us who are in close proximity to the water. Here, from the perspective of a common tourist trying to get a good shot of the island, we witness all of a sudden an unanticipated apparition from afar. The camera zooms in and tries to capture it. Wherever you are, my love, don’t forget about me, we hear Roberto Carlos singing, I just want to be in your thoughts, to believe for a moment that you think of me. The impossibility to grasp this vision with a steady frame reflects the experience of doubt, if what is seen is actually what is there.

Ways of going home

I conducted a workshop in Birzeit, Palestine, as part of a 3-month residency with Disarming Design from Palestine. During the sessions, I introduced methods and exercises related to oral tradition, including collective readings and screenings on the subject, as well as various exercises to explore the concepts of memory and collective memory.
Together with the participants and invited collaborators, we explored the world as a network of interconnected memories, stories, and communities, with a specific understanding of the diverse experiences that underlie these narratives. After the 4 sessions, the participants organized a collective exhibition where they used film, performance, audio, photography, painting, and installation to express their ideas and reflections.

The Real and the Absent

Text by Hayley Beschoff
The Museum Lytke in Leipzig presented, from April 16 to May 1, CHANGES OF STATE, an exhibition by Chilean artists Cosima zu Knyphausen and Francisca Khamis Giacoman.
The conceptual work arises from the observation of this specific aspect within their common social context (zu Knyphausen and Khamis attended the same religious school in Santiago) and led their collaboration together to an exhibition that appeals to a sensory experience of the viewer.
The showcase character of the 3 x 3 square meter space invites from the outside to contemplate the portrait of the Transverberation of St. Teresa of Avila, a sculpture by G. L. Bernini, with s.T.: inkjetprint 176&#160;cm x 120&#160;cm and pink neon light. The spatiality of the Museum is relativized by a thick fog coming from a hidden smoke machine.
From the basement of the building emerges towards the street the sound intervention 4.10.2014 (Ceci), a twenty-minute loop that repeats in a decreasing frequency the recording of a bride singing at her own wedding ceremony. In turn, the latter is perceived as on mute once inside the space.
∞ is a publication that compiles more than 70 photographs of hands with the rock, a recurring motif that could be understood as a feminine sub-genre within the selfies on whatsapp and facebook. The book, positioned on a brief classical ledge, can be contemplated more closely under the light of the candle that is gradually consumed on one side of it. Provided latex gloves allow the book to be leafed through, only to end up piled on the floor after use. 
On the opposite side of the room is the work 18.10.14 (Clarita), which unlike the generic anonymity of the book is a spontaneous and emotional portrait of a young woman in the moment after the yes. The photograph, held between two glass plates, is embedded in the wall at half height. The warm light of a lamp above it highlights the translucent materiality of the paper, although it produces a reflection on the glass that hinders its visibility. The captured moment acquires an iconographic and static character that, in relation to the representation of female ecstasy of greater relevance in the history of Western art, creates a dialogue between two diametrically opposed ideas of transfiguration and fullness.
During the opening, the artists offered a complimentary tray of grapes, rosé wine and cherry liqueur. Both inside and outside, the public was immersed in the sound and visual environment offered by the strange solemnity of the pieces. Thus, during the course of the evening and after the last refractions of the sunset, an ethylic transubstantiation was also perceived in the audience, which in a way confirmed the right choice of the title.

Cambios de Estado

Excerpt of the text Museo genealógico
In relation to a past we could not inhabit, our responsibility lies only in the awareness of our responsibility. 
Candau, Jöel. Memory and Identity. 
The past, especially one we did not personally witness, remains elusive. We are but a small part of the ever-evolving cultural processes happening daily. Understanding the story of immigration, especially one&#8217;s own, is challenging.
Initially focused on Palestinian immigration, this project aimed to go beyond academia. It became a means to learn and piece together an unknown history. I realized that these works don&#8217;t solve issues; they merely highlight problems and provoke new reflections.
Personal narratives are inherently fictional when presented linearly; there is no absolute truth. Instead, these stories demand reinterpretation and adaptation, shaped by the listener&#8217;s experiences and preconceptions.
The Genealogical Museum seeks to demonstrate this process. Through object placement and reinterpretation, it generates a discourse that ranges from irony to sentimentality. It invites viewers to form connections and interpret the narrative from their own perspectives, much like oral storytelling.
Objects in the museum carry multiple meanings, blending their inherent essence with what people believe or wish them to be. They bridge the lived experiences of those who used these objects in the past with the contemporary viewer&#8217;s curiosity about their purpose.
This space, composed of various elements, represents the gaps between collective memory and personal expression, effectively reflecting loss through an anthropological lens.
My journey began with a Google search for Palestine archived in folders. Today, after extensive research, that information is read differently, enriched by personal stories and the hopeful idea that third-generation immigrant still wants to connect with their roots. This spirit birthed the Genealogical Museum, open to all reinterpretation experiences of enigmatic elements, just as each personal story unfolds.

Genealogical Museum

The first pursuit of a performative format in my practice happened when I received a parcel 
from Palestine. As a way to commemorate the opening of this package, I organized a 
performative unveiling dinner during which I welcomed everyone present to speculate on what 
this box could contain. By each of us sharing our own projections, we allowed others into our 
intimate imaginaries, opening up our own frame of references and perhaps private wishes of 
what a box sent to each of us could carry. This first package was eventually opened, to reveal 
it’s insides were stones from my family house in Palestine. 
Through the process of this social gathering and the act of receiving something elusive and sealed, 
I began to solidify the concept and the practice of cultivating different forms of correspondence 
and symbolic acts of ‘unpacking’ within my own work.

Parcel #1

The creative process of this artwork involves a visual conversation that extends from Chile in 2012 to Palestine in 2018, spanning a period of seven years. Through this work, the presence and absence are explored, as well as the search for a symbol and its prohibition, all related to geographic distance.
The video verde, rojo, negro, blanco illustrates the urgent and forced need to find the colors of the Palestinian flag in the landscape. The anticipation of something happening, such as the appearance of a person dressed in red, represents the constant pursuit of what we wish to see.
On the other hand, Sombra filmed in Palestine reflects on the journey through images and time. It represents a timeless path that unfolds in response to verde, rojo, negro, blanco The absence of the flag and the distance from it become central themes. The video illustrates how symbols gain even greater significance in the distance and become a way to understand our own representation, making the literal colors and symbols no longer necessary to grasp and feel the Palestinian identity in the diaspora.
The title of the work makes reference to the work made Felix Gonzalez-Torres in 1988.