On Saturday, September 26, Hverdag Books presents two artistic activations at 118 Chambers of the publications Breaking Bread and Language by Makda Embaie and Mother Tongues by Alva Mooses and Aracelis Girmay.
118 Chambers
118 Chambers Street
Tribeca, New York, NY 10007
On Sunday, September 27th, Hverdag Books will host a book signing with Alva Mooses at 1pm at the 2026 NY Art Book Fair, table T40.
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Avenue
Long Island City, Queens, NY 11101
From 10am to 12pm on September 26, Alva Mooses will lead a multi-language participatory sound activation based on a poetic prompt from Mother Tongues.
Structured as a collective language score and call-and-response, visitors are invited to record a saying, phrase, or sound connected to their mother tongue(s). The activation traces how language is repeated, altered, and remade as it moves between voices. It surfaces the gaps and negotiations through which language takes shape, transforms, and acquires meaning. All are welcome to participate; no prior experience is required.
From 1pm to 3pm on September 26, Makda Embaie will host a session of Breaking Bread and Language exclusively for participants with a relationship to the Tigrinya language.
This workshop aims to carve out a space where people can practice their specific language constellations without it being aligned, compared or corrected into the idea of language that the nation state has. Specifically, this workshop is for people with a connection to the Tigrinya language and diaspora experience to translate texts together. Since 2025, in Sweden and Norway, Embaie has been developing a methodology of translating poetry that doesn’t require the participants to be able to read or write in the language they translate from.
Registration is required to attend these events, both of which are free of charge. Details on entering the space will be provided by email after online registration. These events are a satellite of Printed Matter’s 2026 NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1, made possible through support from the Office for Contemporary Art Norway and Kulturrådet.
118 Chambers is an exhibition and activation space in Tribeca, New York, fostering dialogue between New York–based artists and international artists, writers, and curators. Founded by Mauricio Cortés Ortega and Alva Mooses, with curatorial direction by Nicolas Poblete.
Hverdag Books publishes unique and experimental editions for and about the everyday. Based in Norway, Hverdag Books is an artist-run imprint dedicated to publishing vulnerable and raw works by underrepresented voices, founded in 2016 by Jessica Williams. Hverdag is a place to put things down: poetry, conversations, hybrid and visual essays, and more.
Send an email to hei@hverdagbooks.com to RSVP.
Alva Mooses is an interdisciplinary artist and educator working across printmaking, sculpture, and installation. She prints, casts, and reconfigures materials to create indexes of place, registering labor, language, and migration through sign systems, bodily traces, and geological forms.
Alva holds a BFA from The Cooper Union and an MFA from Yale University. Recent commissions and exhibitions include Manos del Tiempo for Historias/Reveladas at The Clemente (NYC), Mother Tongues at Brooklyn Central Library, Medida del Mar at Salón Silicón (Mexico City), (Be)longing at TSA (NYC), and Space Coiled Like A Serpent at LES Print Shop (NYC). She has completed fellowships and residencies at the Center for Book Arts, Lower East Side Printshop, Socrates Sculpture Park, Casa Wabi, and SOMA, among others. She lives and works in New York City.
The nation state and language are central concepts in the practice of Makda Embaie. The works are expressed through sound, text, film, and installations. What happens when the art practices and tries living through the question of what language consists of? How can we practice language and other expressions as specific instead of language as a property of the nation state?
Recent works include Making a mother out of memory (2026) at Kunstnerforbundet in Oslo, the solo exhibition The Fruit is Ripening (2025) at Konsthallen Blå Stället in Gothenburg. Public commissions include I remember all of you (2024), developed in collaboration with Black Archives Sweden, and the light and sound installation Gravel scatters time (2023) for Gothenburg city.
Makda has studied at Konstfack, Biskop Arnös author school and has taken the post-master Decolonizing Architecture at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm. In 2022 she received her master’s degree from Oslo National Academy of the Arts.