Sahar Damoni’s new multi-disciplinary performance/stage -installation, Nawa, continues her research into reproductive and sexual freedom, bodily autonomy, and the impact of abortion for Arab women. Wandering through fog-like sounds and sensations in the depths of subconsciousness, the work asks: Does the body remember? Is the body ever really free?

Nawa explores the auto-biographical intangible dimensions and psychological after-effects of the surgical abortion procedure, looking at the methods used to anesthetize patients and the physical and mental states these can induce, specifically the phenomenon of being “awake” or aware while under anesthesia.

For Nawa, Sahar creates a rich performance environment with her body at the center, conjuring the dualities of pleasure and pain, conscious and subconscious, as she envisions a new kind of healing. The dance combines movement, photography and video, sound and textile to create multiple landscapes of experience spanning the personal, communal, and political.