Seeing Sensing: A Sensorial Tour of the Collection

See and make artworks in a new way using performance and choreography! Led by performer Petra Serhal, this participatory workshop takes families  on a sensorial journey through selected artworks from the Sursock Museum's permanent collection, including works by Etel Adnan, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Hussein Madi, Khalil Zgheib, and others.

Using many physical games and perception exercises drawn from theatre and performance, Serhal will choreograph you through the collection displays, enticing you to use all your senses to encounter the artworks. After seeing and sensing the paintings, sculptures, and installations in the museum, you will have the chance to play with everyday materials such as flowers, concrete, textiles, coal, wood, and paint to create your own artwork.

Participants should wear comfortable clothes that are practical for movement and that they don’t mind getting messy.

Petra Serhal is a performance maker and actress. She graduated from the Theatre Department in the Lebanese University, Institute of Fine Arts with a Diploma Higher Studies in Acting (2005). She received an M.A. in Body in Performance (2015) from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, UK. She regularly collaborates with multi-disciplinary artists and filmmakers. Performances include The Mourned (2011), No Blood Included (2016), and Project Martyr (work in progress). In 2010, she began collaborating with the Dictaphone Group, a research and performance collective that creates live performances based on research on space. Her collaborations with the Dictaphone Group include: This Sea is Mine (2012), The Bus Cemetery (2012), and Nothing to Declare (2013).