Twelve Gates Arts presents A Traveler Weeps, A River Laughs, opening June 5 at 6:30 pm as part of ArtPhilly 2026. Taking its title from the world of Mahmoud Darwish's journals, where a river laughs before it dies of thirst and laughter and loss are not opposites but the same record, the exhibition brings together artists Alexei Mansour, Mir Masud-Elias, sāgar kāmath, and Shehrezad Maher in work that holds more than one truth at once about place, myth, and what remains when official narratives run dry.

Spanning film, poetry, and mixed-media installation, and made in the context of America's 250th year, this is not a commemoration. Rather, it is a record of what was laughed at, of what was lost, of what is still being made.