Yalla Collective
Yalla Collective is a DJ ensemble founded in 2022 that showcases the music and culture of the SWANA region and its diasporas in Finland.*
*SWANA is an anti-colonial term referring to the regions of Southwest Asia and North Africa.
Instagram: @theyalla.co
Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/theyallacollective
Moe Mustafa
Moe Mustafa is a visual and sound artist, performer, and writer with an MA in Art and Media from Aalto University. His work spans text, sound, and performance, often focusing into themes of identity, memory, sexuality, and diaspora. Moe’s recent projects include: A performance titled Mascu-Fuck comissioned by Kiasma in 2023; A Floating Body of Cloud, an audio essay exploring environmental sound and diasporic identity, commissioned by YLE and set for release in Spring 2025. His work investigates intersections of sound, politics, and emotion, with a focus on queer Arab experiences. Moe’s practice often questions the dynamics of belonging and desire, creating evoking narratives that challenge societal norms.
Fagmented Geography
Fragmented Geography is a performance installation that navigates memory, exile, and sonic resistance through the intimate lens of 1980s Arabic pop music. Set against the sound of a sea that both haunts and heals, the performer stands still—dressed in sculptural costume made with reflective emergency foil, illuminated by slow-moving wave projections that ripple across their body. Their stillness becomes a sculpture, a monument of displaced time.
A pre-recorded voice-over unfolds as a poetic excavation of diasporic memory: childhood in Kuwait, Jordan and Palestine, queerness emerging in dance, a cassette tape as the only thread back “home.” The voice speaks of fragmentation of nations, bodies, and identities, and of the sonic rituals that help resist it.
On the stage there are two metal sculptures resonate with embedded sea sounds, amplifying the feeling of displacement while creating a tactile sonic atmosphere. At the close of the voice-over, the performance shifts: the artist invites the audience to join in a celebratory gathering. Arabic songs from cassettes begin to play. The space transforms into a shared dance floor, a temporary homeland where bodies remember together.
