Nada El-Omari & Sonya Mwambu: +1-home

Nada El-Omari & Sonya Mwambu, +1-home, 2025, installation view

+1-home

On view until November 18, 2025
Struts Gallery, Sackville

Struts Gallery is pleased to present +1-Home, an exhibition by artists Nada El-Omari and Sonya Mwambu, on view until November 18.

Since its opening in September, we’ve welcomed a steady stream of artists, community members, and students into this immersive work. From the engaging soundscape that fills the gallery to the quiet intimacy of voices heard through a telephone, +1-Home invites us to listen closely. By way of a first-person player video game, this installation by Nada El-Omari and Sonya Mwambu offers viewers a mosaic of calling cards through which to navigate, observe, remember, and reflect on what really brings people together. Viewers have responded with care and curiosity, spending time with the installation and engaging with the space. Small, meaningful objects are delicately placed throughout the space, inviting quiet reflection and discovery.

Nada El-Omari & Sonya Mwambu, +1-home, 2025

“Calling cards always sat in a bowl at the entrance of our childhood homes, from Uganda to Egypt and Palestine, through various lands and onto Turtle Island. For separated families, calling cards were a way to witness a connection across generations and displacements, from here to wherever home is. Originally conceived at the start of a global pandemic, +1-home now continues its life as a digital installation from website to interactive experience.

Comprised of a mosaic of calling cards in which textures become spaces and narratives become multiplicities, we turn to the shadows and each of us can navigate, observe, remember, relate, listen, learn, feel, reconvene, reconnect, and give ourselves environments in which we can reflect on what really brings us together, on our own time, in our own way, and in the in-betweens.

Each calling card attempts to convey space through our senses because that is where we feel we most belong and are given the space to archive. Within each room, a conversation takes place. Repetitions, patterns, connections, and weavings occur, one to the next, in whichever order arises. Time is your choice, space your companion, you, the walking archive. As our stories live in physically different places, a simple calling card unites our bodies once more.”

About the Artists

Sonya Mwambu is an experimental filmmaker and editor based in Toronto. Born in Kampala, they grew up in Canada and their work centres on the intersections of their identities through the exploration of race, gender, language and the connections they find through the experimentations of analogue film and digital technologies. Their works have shown at Nuit Blanche Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, the8fest, InterAccess, McMaster Museum of Art, (S8) Mostra Internacional de Cinema Periférico, and the Mono No Aware Cinema Arts Festival. Their work has also been published in qumra journal and The Archive of Forgetfulness supported by the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg. Their last project, mountains never meet, but people do, was an interactive digital and analog installation exploring personal archives of Uganda’s intertwined histories within the diaspora, completed as part of a residency at Charles Street Video. Mwambu holds a BFA in Film Production from York University and is pursuing an MFA in Film.

Nada El-Omari is a filmmaker and writer of Palestinian and Egyptian origin based in Montreal, Quebec. Her practice and research interests centre on the intergenerational transmissions of memories, displacement, and the stories of belonging and identity which she explores through a poetic, hybrid lens. Focusing on process and fragments in text, sound, and image, Nada explores new ways to self-narrate and speak hybridity and self. Her films have been shown at several festivals, on Shasha and Tenk, and in various galleries. Her work has also been published in Montreal Serai, qumra journal, on Pavillons and in Tantôt magazine. Her last digital project was commissioned by the Art Gallery of Ontario in collaboration with Sonya Mwambu and shown as a digital installation in gallery, custom-made to InterAccess’s immersive projection environment as a two-player interactive experience. El-Omari holds a BFA in Film Production and an MFA in Film from York University.

Nada El-Omari & Sonya Mwambu, +1-home, 2025

If you haven’t had the chance to visit yet, now’s the time. Come experience +1-Home before it closes on November 18.

Struts Gallery operates within the Siknikt district of Mi’kma’ki, now known as Sackville, New Brunswick. Established in 1975 and incorporated in 1982, Struts Gallery is an artist-run-centre dedicated to the presentation and production of contemporary art. We connect artists and build community by facilitating dynamic interactions through accessible public programming and outreach activities, including exhibitions, residencies, screenings, workshops, talks, and publishing projects.

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