Chicago exhibition highlights psychosocial experience of Palestinians
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Palestinian artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme present visuals and audios of life under Palestinian occupation at a Chicago museum.
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Two installations: Don’t read poetics in these lines (2010-21); Once an artist, now just a tool (2021).
The Art Institute of Chicago welcomed an exhibition that portrays a refreshing cultural narrative of the colonization of Palestine, which has been watered down by Israeli propaganda to strip an entire people of their past and present.
Much of the struggle which Palestinians experience does not meet our empathy; the hegemony of the Israeli colonial project, which not only includes military and security behemoth budgets, but also arts and culture annexation tactics which may not be so obvious for those who aren't paying much attention.
The exhibition, titled If only this mountain between us could be ground to dust, curated by Maite Borjabad Lopez-Pastor, featured 4 installations by Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, who are both Palestinian artists.
The installations combining digital prints, text, video and sound, as described by online art magazine Hyperallergic, "are conceived as an amalgamated experience that evokes the mental space of life under occupation in Palestine," while also pushing back against the colonial narratives that "Israel" pushes against the world.
As described by the website, the way leading to the main exhibition contains 2 installations that pose as a threshold between the inside and outside experiences under Israeli occupation. The first installation, Don't read poetics in these lines (2010-21), exhibits a series of words based on Twitter exchanges, exhibiting how revolt in the Arab world propagates through social media. The second installation, Once an artist now just a tool (2021), exhibits texts in vinyl dispersed on the wall.
The curator explains, "The artists prompt the institution into conversation, by exposing the colonial violence and wrongful appropriation involved in museum practices."
The projects which were presented show the creation, erasure, and transformations of narratives that shape public opinion on the Palestinian struggle against the occupation.
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Oh shining star testify (2019).
The main event is the last two installations: At those terrifying frontiers where the existence and disappearance of people fade into each other and Oh shining star testify (both 2019-21).
The two installations comprise CCTV footage, digital avatars, texts, deep soundscapes, and music, to convey two show two events, both related to each other, of mourning and resilience in Palestinian life.
In At those terrifying frontiers where the existence and disappearance of people fade into each other, the visuals and audios paint a picture of what it's like to be an "illegal" person, where the very being of what it is to be a Palestinian is conscribed in spatial, political and military presence of a colonizer.
Excerpts of Edward Said's poem, "After the Last Sky," accompanied human avatars extracted from the March of Return: mass demonstrations in protest of the blockade on the Gaza Strip.
The images of the glitched Palestinians, whose eyes and facial features are neither articulated nor pronounced, represent the erasure of identity which "Israel" attempts to assure through its wholesale erasure of a people and its land.
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Faces fade into each other at the At those terrifying frontiers where the existence and disappearance of people fade into each other installation (2019)
The Oh shining star testify follows suit, projecting layered images on panels and playing atmospheric sound. The work revolved around the murder of a 14-year-old boy, Yusuf Shawamreh, who was killed for crossing into his village to pick some edible plants. Murder for mere existence, mere resistance. The exhibition takes into account the daily lives of Palestinians, which basically comprise little acts of resistance in exchange for existence.
The exhibition as a whole presents a psycho-social experience which the Israeli occupation inflicts on Palestinians on a daily basis - an experience far from the collective consciences of those oblivious.
