Muscular Dreams by Dalia al-Kury
Edition of 200
Staple bound
28 pages
130 x 190 mm
2026
In Muscular Dreams, Dalia al-Kury documents lives suspended between survival and loss. Reflecting on her hybrid film Syrialism, al-Kury introduces “speculative non-fiction,” a practice where she co-creates worlds with subjects like Salam, who navigate the crushing weight of survival guilt. These are refugees whose futures in exile are governed by unresolved crises at home. Drawing on their shared dreams, al-Kury lets them break the laws of physics—turning a water hose into a lifeline from Oslo to Syria—to visualize solutions reality denies. For al-Kury, pain is the material of art, transformed through surreal imagery into public resistance. If history is written by victors, she argues, cinema must let the oppressed write the future. This piece frames collective grief as a vital site of political reclamation where the impossible becomes possible, and where we dare to imagine a livable world.