Artists:

Jumana Emil Abboud, Taysir Batniji, Mona Hatoum, Mohammad Musallam, Khalil Rabah, and Oraib Toukan

Description:

“ In/Scene “ a video-art exhibition – a new art form for the Palestinian audience – that includes installation, performance, and sound in works focused on displacement, exile, memory, identity, representation, loss, and home. Hatoum’s video-art work Changing Parts contrasts the intimate space of her parents’ bathroom in Beirut with the breakdown of public order during the Lebanese civil war where home is both an object of longing and a kind of prison. In The Pomegranate, Abboud films herself trying to put all the seeds back into a pomegranate, staining her hands, and suggesting that a return to the past is impossible. The silent projection in Bruit de Fond by Taysir Batniji conceals the tension and violence experienced by the artist in Palestine in childhood memories, reminding the spectator that there is no escape from the past. Trying to Count Memories without Laughter’s Disruption, a two-channel video installation by Oraib Toukan,  is a commentary on memory – especially the Middle Eastern memory –accustomed to being raped, eradicated, and dispossessed of its rights. In A This and a That by Khalil Rabah, olives are squashed, one after another. With each squash we see an ant – well known for their hard work and persistence – passing by, suggesting resistance. In Performance by Muhammad Musallam from Gaza, the artist tries to break through a curtain using his hands, legs, and body, but with no success, as if portraying daily life for Gaza’s more than one million inhabitants.