Over twenty-five years ago, artists Joana and Khalil met poet and painter Etel Adnan, forming a strong friendship. Etel and Joana both trace their origins to the city of Smyrna (now Izmir), a once-Ottoman city marked by forced displacement. After the collapse of the Ottoman empire, both of their families fled to Lebanon, where they transmitted to Etel and Joana memories shaped by the sorrow of loss and uprooting.

 Revisiting their constructed personal narratives, the artists confront the legacy of Smyrna and question the weight of inherited nostalgia. They explore shifting borders, layered identities, and the making of place—pondering, as Adnan once did, whether it’s possible to live “out of nostalgia, in an eternal present.”