H.SINNO'S POEMS OF CONSUMPTION Set for New York Arab Festival

New York Arab Festival (NYAF), New York City's premiere multigenre two-month-long Arab and Arab American art and culture festival during Arab American Heritage Month, presents the New York premiere of Lebanese-American artist, rockstar, and activist H.Sinno's (Hamed Sinno) solo performance Poems of Consumption on Wednesday, May 14, at 7:30pm at National Sawdust (80 N 6th St, Brooklyn), the women-led, Williamsburg, Brooklyn-based non-profit cultural institution.

Curated by theorist and artist Adham Hafez, NYAF is known for presenting cutting-edge genre-defying projects, such as “Poems of Consumption”. Known for their fearless artistic voice and formal experimentation, Sinno's multimedia “anti-spectacle”—created with video artist Matteo Zamagni and composer-arranger Paul Stroud—weaves their poetic Amazon reviews into a sonic, visual exploration of late-capitalist desire and grief.

Originally commissioned by the Barbican Centre and Shubbak Festival in 2023, Poems of Consumption places lush string arrangements next to hardcore EDM, field recordings, and influences ranging from ASMR and pop to dabke and musical theater. “I sometimes delve so far into theatrics that I skip the exit at musical theatre, keep going past kitsch, and come out the other end at complete melodrama,” Sinno told GQ Middle East of their process composing and producing the song cycle. The visual dimension is equally prodigious: video art by Zamagni and Sinno saturates the space with a relentless barrage of receipts, product images, broken animations, and phantasmagoric overlays. 

The result is a production that's danceable and devastating, maximalist and deeply introspective, covering themes like ennui, surveillance capitalism, heartbreak, boycotts, and orientalism. A rare blend of high-concept critique and emotional honesty, the performance lays bare Sinno's experiences with depression, guilt, and fleeting pleasure shaped by the rituals of consumption. “I think we all know what consumerism is and what's happening to the environment, and if you're a climate denier, some queer, neurodivergent musician from Lebanon is not going to change your mind,” Sinno told The Line of Best Fit in 2023. “[Poems of Consumption] is about this very vulnerable, almost shameful relationship with buying things…the shame and the gratification of it, and I think, in a lot of ways, that's where the politics happens. I'm not yelling at anyone. I'm actually just being publicly filthy.”