Talk

Joe Namy and Sumayya Vally in Conversation

Joe Namy, *Cosmic Breath,* 2023. Installation view at Islamic Arts Biennale 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

Date and Time:: Saturday 28 Feb 2026, 4-5pm
Location:: Minassa

To mark the opening of Cosmic Breath in Ibraaz’s newly inaugurated Musalla space, artist Joe Namy and Resident Architect Sumayya Vally come together for a conversation around sound, space, and spiritual practice.

Originally commissioned by Vally for the first Islamic Arts Biennale in 2023, they will discuss the inspiration and process behind Cosmic Breath. Together, they will reflect on how artistic and sonic practice, as well architecture and design, can create spaces for contemplation and collective experience. From the amplified voices of the adhan spanning continents and centuries to the spaces that hold them, the conversation will explore how creative practice engages with spirituality today.

Joe Namy is a Lebanese artist and musician based in London, whose practice encompasses sound and its history and impact on the built environment. Namy's work critically engages with the gender dynamics of bass, migration patterns of instruments, and the complexities of translation in all this—from language to language, from score to sound, from drum to dance. Ongoing projects by Namy focus on the history and resonance of opera houses across eleven countries in the SWANA region, and activations on the archive of pioneering electronic musician Halim El-Dabh. Namy is the founding director of BBS Community Radio and has held radio residencies on Radio Alhara, Clocktower Radio and WNYU.

Sumayya Vally is the principal of architecture and research studio, Counterspace. She is the youngest architect commissioned to design London’s Serpentine Pavilion, which explored themes of identity, community, belonging, and gathering. She was also invited to be the Artistic Director of the inaugural Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah, which marked a pivotal moment in reimagining the definition of Islamic art. Vally’s practice is in constant conversation with her teaching at leading architecture schools, including Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), and UCL’s The Bartlett School of Architecture.

- Exhibition
Cosmic Breath
Joe Namy
26 Feb 2026 – 30 Aug 2026
Wednesday – Sunday, 11am–6pm

Joe Namy and Sumayya Vally in Conversation

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Cosmic Breath