Tanya Habjouqa

Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots - Five years in the lives of Syrian women in Jordan (2012 - 2017)

The Syrian crisis devastated a country I knew and loved. The very stability Syria once knew was extracted at a heavy price. Dissent was not tolerated, neither speech nor association was free, and the notorious prisons of the Syrian regime were full of those who would object. ‘Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots’ was born out of the current terrible moment when even greater blackness has enveloped Syria.

As a photojournalist, I was often assigned to cover the spillover into Jordan of Syria's disaster. But after each story was finished and filed, I still had endless material that was outside the scope of those assignments but needed to be shared and, at the same time, needed a different kind of canvas to be more fully explored. After all, much of what defined these Syrians' lives were the absences – of both people and places. But how do you photograph what isn't there? To overcome such challenges, I worked collaboratively with the people I photographed to create these performed portraits. Therefore, this project is many things: study, investigation, documentary, reenactment, archive, rumination, and even séance, for those desperate to resurrect the dead or confront the past and its ghosts.

'Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots' tells this story through women using their bodies to perform their stories, actively occupying and speaking to their confinement. An emotive and investigative narration told in three distinct chapters of the Syrian civil war. Blending metaphorical narratives into a synthesis of performed original poetry, intimate recordings and film diaries, and moving and still imagery. An addendum section entitled "testimonies'' addresses the stories of what happened to the absent men in their lives. These characters have been defined by men who are now reduced to images on mobile phones, TV screens, or escapist imagery on Bollywood films. Unique, intimate, sexual, horrific.

All names have been changed to pseudonyms at the request of the interviewees for their protection.

*Arabic proverb meaning: "I'll believe it when I see it" - i.e., you seriously doubt something is going to happen.

Tanya Habjouqa (1975, Jordan), raised between Texas and the Middle East, has earned a reputation for documentaries that bring politics and creative vision into the same frame.

With a focus on gender, identity, and socio-political issues in the Middle East, there is always a layer of gravitas and an intuitive sense of metaphor beneath her work. Tanya is an artist, educator, and member of NOOR Images.

Habjouqa takes on a series-based approach, immersed in research and interlaying journalistic, academic, conceptual and documentary practices. In recent years, her projects have been commended by World Press Photo, TIME, and the Smithsonian. She has been hired by organisations such as Amnesty International to create multi-country media campaigns.

She is a mentor for the 'Arab Photography Documentary Programme' and conducts workshops internationally. Tanya is trained in journalism and anthropology with a Masters in Global Media and emphasis on Middle Eastern Politics from the University of London SOAS.

Her work has been exhibited worldwide and is in the permanent collections of the MFA Boston, Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA), and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Habjouqa is represented by East Wing Gallery in Doha, Qatar.