Signature Projekt Shahzad Ismaily

“It’s music as magic, and he himself is the instrument – or maybe a lightning rod – tapping into the collective spirit of the room at a particular moment in time.” 

This is how journalist, DJ/producer and presenter Vivian Host, who commutes between Los Angeles and New York, describes Shahzad Ismaily’s artistic practice. He has been associated with the Monheim Triennale since the first edition.

His Signature Project “you are the other lung in my chest”, which will premiere on the festival ship on Friday, July 4, 2025 at 7 pm, features the top-class Kuwaiti artist Yousif Yaseen (guitar, percussion) and Miriam Elhaji (guitar, vocals), a Venezuelan-Moroccan-American artist, as well as the Palestinian-Syrian word artist Ghayath Almadhoun and the Iranian-American Haleh Liza Gafori. 
The title is based on the poem “A Lover from Palestine” by resistance poet Mahmoud Darwish, who lived in exile in Lebanon and Paris for many years. Ismaily himself plays electric bass, percussion and Moog synthesiser.

Read the portrait “You don’t have to tune in to the music to feel it, it already permeates you” by Vivian Host in the Monheim Papers on our website.