SasaHara Ghanem-Chaney (French-Algerian, 1993) is a writer, artist, performer and facilitator based in Amsterdam since 2017. They work with worldbuilding, interactive installations, performance and somatic practices. Their practice makes use of mythologies as frameworks to document and archive contemporary queer narratives and of spatial installations as supports for collectivization. In their work, they question the politics of the making of History. What are the invisible frameworks at play in the decision of archiving? The myths and legends of the past make for a large part of our contemporary imaginaries. But which of these lores survive through time to contemporary perspectives? Through speculative mythmaking, immersive spaces and collective practices SasaHara questions the making of stories and our political role in the archiving of queer narratives.
With a background in public space art management, and cultural economics they worked in the cultural field as a public programmer, exhibition producer and fundraiser. In 2017 they moved to Amsterdam to become the assistant of the artist masharu, and developed their own practice. Between 2022 and 2024 they studied at the Sandberg Instituut in the program re:master opera, exploring experimental forms for music-driven theater.
SasaHara's work looks at fantasy storytelling as a tool to document the queer experience. A large part of their approach is informed by the critical fabulation theory of Sadiya Hartman, with a focus on the gaps of the archived history of queer voices. Looking at the impact of myths, folklores and legends on the contemporary imaginary landscapes, SasaHara creates poetic fables centring queer emotions in a process of archiving the unheard.
Their current research focuses on the act of choiring as a spiritual practice for queer people to connect together in the present as well as to their ancestors and futurities - largely inspired by the Deep Listening practice of Pauline Oliveros. The work that sprouts from this research brings together the writing of a mythology, algorithmical music composition, interactive sound sculptures, the archiving of queer voices, and a general reflection on non-linear chronologies, and the queering of perspective of time.
