Nour Bishouty: Madre improbable

“Improbable Mother”, curated by Miguel A. López, is Nour Bishouty’s (Amman, 1986) first solo exhibition in a museum and her first presentation in Mexico. The exhibition includes the premiere of her film “Catfish Mother Puddle of Juice [Bagre madre, charco de jugo]” (2025–2026), alongside a constellation of recent and new sculptures and drawings. Filmed in Mexico City and Toronto, the film is constructed as a parable narrated by a catfish, in which the figures of mother and daughter slip and reassemble within a dreamlike temporality. Narrated in Spanish, the monologue oscillates between allegory and scientific precision, delicately destabilising the linguistic and visual systems that govern how bodies are named and rendered legible.

Based in Toronto, the Palestinian-Lebanese artist’s practice draws on familial narratives to examine the gaps in archival memory, Western knowledge production, and fantasy. This body of work originated in Bishouty’s initial intention to make a film about her mother’s hands—atypically formed—and has since expanded into an exploration of gesture as a terrain of unresolved meanings. In the face of persistent regimes of surveillance, regulation, and state violence against vulnerable bodies, the exhibition works through ambiguity and resemblance, tracing intricate genealogies and unexpected relationships.