PUSH/PULL is a transdisciplinary exhibition project featuring new works by aisha tida and Leila Mnekbi, developed with the support of EG Gionfriddo and Eliot Gray Fisher, co-directors of ARCOS Dance. The exhibition at BOX 13 ArtSpace invites visitors to experiment with notions of agency and collectivity while questioning the patterns, loops, and illusions that we wish to escape.
A quilted structure by aisha tida envelops visitors in isolated overwhelm, scored by Mnekbi’s discordant, layered questioning in the multilingual sound experience Lines Lines On These Walls. These symbiotic works form the spatial sensory installation IN/OUT/THRU, where visitors can slow down, examine without judgment, and sit with the weight they carry—not as an isolated burden, but as a shared, collective heaviness. Guided by an omniscient voice and surrounded by shifting sonic textures, visitors are asked to be present in the chaos before engaging in collective commiserating and creative processing in the community-activated Aftercare Space.
PUSH/PULL is further animated by a roster of public programming, including an interactive opening night performance by ARCOS and skillsharing workshops oriented around materials featured in the exhibition.
At its core, PUSH/PULL demonstrates the need for reflective pause and the exploration of the creative potential of togetherness. Its offerings serve as a reminder that even in fragmentation, we are not alone.
PUSH/PULL is on view in the Upstairs BOX Gallery at BOX 13 ArtSpace in Houston, May 30th to June 28th, 2025, open to the public Saturdays or by appointment. The PUSH/PULL Exhibition Project is funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.
aisha tida (عائشة تیدا / ”eye-sha tee-dah”) is a Tunisian-Cambodian-Chinese-American cultural worker based between Houston and Tunis. She collaboratively employs alternative forms of education and creative intervention to engage audiences in the many places she calls home. Her artistic practice has sculptural and social emphases and employs a range of techniques and materials, from quilting and super-low-tech silkscreen printing to recipe-writing and multilingual glossary-building. Her work lies at the intersection of art, design, and civic action and is grounded in the themes of heritage and diaspora, art as social practice, and the making and breaking of patterns.
In her artistic and curatorial work, aisha explores the creative potential of togetherness when contemporary and community arts converge, co-creating with artists and initiatives whose aesthetic practice is a tool for community-building in search of justice. She seeks to discover what art, curation, and intersectional education can offer in the further development of individual awareness, collective identity, and a more equitable future.
aisha tida received her BFA from Cornell University (2016), served as the artist-in-residence at El Warcha Collaborative Studios in the Medina of Tunis (2019-2020), and trained in the hybrid postgraduate art-in-context program TASAWAR Curatorial Studios (Tunis and online, 2019-2021) before returning to Texas in late 2020. Her artistic and curatorial work has been shared with audiences nationally in Houston, Marfa, Los Angeles, and Upstate New York, and internationally in Bremen and Tunis, with her online workshops engaging participants from across the globe.*
When aisha is not in her studio at BOX 13 ArtSpace developing work for the upcoming collaborative exhibition project PUSH/PULL, you may find her wandering the aisles of her favorite markets in Houston or dreaming up recipes for the Diaspora Dumplings collection with friends, family, and strangers.
*Including Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, France, Spain, Germany, Canada, Mexico, UK, USA, and the Netherlands.
Website: https://aishatida.com/PUSH-PULL-Exhibition-Project
Website: aishatida.com
Instagram:@aishanotaiiisha
Leila Mnekbi is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist whose work bridges performance, music, and storytelling. She is an actor and musician who treats each performance as a space of experimentation—where vulnerability, melodies, and narrative collide. Her artistic universe is shaped by emotion and grounded in everyday sounds and spoken language. Through her voice and presence, she explores personal and collective memory, often navigating different life themes like sorrow, power, and survival.
Though trained in computer science at the Lebanese American University (Beirut, 2020), Leila’s artistic life has always run in parallel. Throughout her education and career, she has continued performing in plays and expanding her piano and vocal training while pursuing other creative, cultural, and technical ventures.
Leila’s work is influenced by her surroundings, drawing inspiration from multiple cultural and sonic textures. Her performances are intimate, often shaped by voice, breath, and words. As a singer and performer, she plays with language and literary imagery.
She currently performs with El Teatro Studio, where she continues to develop her voice and body as tools and emotional expression. Beyond the stage, Leila works in civil society, specializing in digital safety and protection of vulnerable communities online. Her professional mission is rooted in care, particularly for women, activists, and marginalized groups navigating hostile digital environments. She sees this not as separate from her art, but part of a shared commitment to storytelling, protection, and resistance.
Currently based in Tunis, Leila continues to experiment and build space for herself in the contemporary Arab art scene—balancing day jobs and late-night rehearsals, workshops and writing sessions, vulnerability and strength. Her artistic path is one of constant learning and unlearning, driven by a desire to reach mastery, not only in form, but in authenticity.
Instagram: @leila.cr2
EG Gionfriddo and Eliot Gray Fisher co-direct ARCOS, a multi/trans/inter/anti-disciplinary group using dance and technology to imagine new possible futures. They primarily create via a method of hacking, or repurposing everyday technologies into performance, to inspire others to become more regular hackers of the systems in our world. They hold an expansive understanding of technology that includes language, movement systems, and identity construction, as well as our material devices and the less visible network infrastructures that they access. They understand our bodies as highly intelligent, already hybrid, and existing in multiple spaces in nonlinear time. They consider their process and performance projects as rehearsals for survival in an increasingly complex world; growing our capacity to hold that complexity in ourselves and with each other.
ARCOS offers arts training, development, and service programming rooted in the slow, insistent work of imagining a more equitable future. Their programs provide multiple paths towards changework, from the deeply personal to widely relational. These programs take the shape of weekly class series, workshops, academic residencies, microgrants, and production mentorship for independent performing artists. ARCOS understands their work to be a relational, rather than transactional, practice of sharing resources, knowledge, and care.
Website: arcosdance.com
Instagram: @arcosdance
See the May 30–June 28, 2025 Exhibitions Press Release here.