Wolf Tones

With: Marsil Andjelov Al Mahamid, Hanan Benammar, Kamil Dossar, Laila Hida, Fatima Moallim, and Hamid Zenati. 

Curated by Myriam Amroun and Natasha Marie Llorens.

Wolf Tones presents the work of seven artists as a refracted analogy of an acoustic phenomenon. The wolf tone is an irregular vibration produced by a musical instrument such as the cello. It is the result of an acoustic conflict, when the vibrations made by an instrument’s string and those produced by its wooden body are too similar to harmonize yet are unable to resolve into one another. The wolf tone is best described as a feedback loop of howling sound.

Borrowed from Sara Nadal Melsió recent book, Europe and the Wolf, the term provides an experiential framework for artwork that vibrates irregularly. The artists presented have an elliptical understanding of belonging, which makes their engagement with film, classical music, and other systems for the organization of being, echo in the context of art like a wolf tone. They articulate mobile, non-linear narratives about the past, the future, and, crucially, the possibility of imaginative rehabilitation in the wake of violence. Each exhibited work is both a resounding howl and a proposition.

Marsil Andjelov Al Mahamid’s large-scale embroidered drawings against a white background show historical, violent scenes from the internment camps in Northern Norway under Nazi occupation. Al Mahamid, trained and based in Tromsø, Norway, was born in Kikinda, Serbia in 1983; his father is Syrian and his mother is Serbian. Hamid Zenati’s textile paintings are composed of colorful, abstract motifs that recall the melhfa, a very long piece of cloth commonly worn by women across the Sahel and Sahara regions of Africa. Zenati (1944–2022) was born in Constantine and raised in Algiers, both cities in Algeria. He immigrated in his 20s and was based for most of his life in Munich, Germany.

Kamil Dossar was born in Denmark in 1987. His father was once the fastest man in Iraq and his mother is a Hungarian biologist. Dossar presents a video, Fahrenheit (2025), that includes footage from the artist’s journey back to Baghdad as an adult. It also examines his father’s obsession with Bach and the idea of monstrosity. 

This Is Our Body (2021) is a video piece based on a performance by Hanan Benammar in Harstad, Norway. The work explores Norwegian-Danish priest Hans Egede’s colonial legacy in Kalaallit Nunaat - Greenland. Benammar was born in Paris in 1989 to Algerian parents. She has been based in Oslo since 2011. 

Moroccan artist Laila Hida was born in Casablanca in 1983 but lives and works in Marrakech, the historical gateway to the Sahara. For this exhibition, Hida presents Sange Khara [Hard Stone] (2025), a work that combines 16mm footage and digital video to suggest that landscapes are fabricated out of many conflicting forms of desire. Born in 1992 in Moscow to Somali parents, Fatima Moallim was raised in Växjö, Sweden and now lives and works in Malmö. She will produce a large-scale abstract drawing on-site in Tromsø. 

“Wolf Tones” is the first exhibition in a cycle of four in an artistic research project co-lead by Amroun and Llorens and funded by the Swedish Research Council, called “Decolonization is Not A Metaphor.” The aim of this broader research is to flesh out the notion of “minor transnationalism” in curatorial practice as a critical approach to decoloniality in the arts. Myriam Amroun was born in Algiers in 1991. She was raised and is currently based there. Natasha Marie Llorens was born in Marseille in 1983. She was raised loosely between France and the United States, and is currently based in Stockholm.

The project has recieved support from OCA (Office for Contemporary Art Norway), Arts Council Norway, the Swedish Arts Council and the Danish Arts Foundation.

Please check in with Tromsø Kunstforening for opening times or press visits during the festive period.