APERTURE 27,000: SALMA FERIANI GALLERY, JAN 2009

Salma Tuqan

Curatorial Statement

Aperture 27,000‘Aperture 27,000’ refers both to the once land mass of Historic Palestine, 27,000 square kilometers, as well as subverting the traditional photographic term ‘aperture,’ (an adjustment of the iris that controls the amount of light passing through the lens) by referring to the control of a passage, or in this case ‘a land.’

This exhibition does not attempt to represent the plethora of talent emerging from Occupied Palestine and Israel. Each of the artists incorporates issues of displacement, loss and their quest for identity, which are explored intimately and provokingly within their work. However, what is most intriguing is the varied perspective of these four artists, residing in four separate geographical territories and most importantly, living four different realities.

The bittersweet narrative of a ‘lost land’ passed down through generations as well as unfulfilled aspirations for return haunt Sama Alshaibi’s work. Projecting onto her most personal object, her own body, she confronts the viewer with bold outspoken objections on the conflict, nostalgia and a struggle to carve an identity based on inherited memories, a land ‘uninherited,’ and a loss felt from a distance.

Similarly, Anisa Ashkar (living and working in Tel Aviv) uses her own face and body as a canvas for her own testaments on her surroundings, that of the threatened public sphere of the Jewish state in which she operates as an Arab. Both her performative and photographic work expose a deep conflict in formulating and validating a place detached from an identity or an identity detached from a place. Men feature in much of her performative work, linked with texts based on the power struggle between the two sexes. Through these she expresses a need for asserting herself as a female artist in a traditionally male dominated sphere.

Trained as a photojournalist, Rula Halwani’s challenging series titled ‘Intimacy’ was taken at the Qalandia checkpoint. The perspective of each photograph forces the viewer to concentrate solely on the exchange between both parties, the unequal power struggle, fixing our gaze on the body language manifested within each hand gesture. The title and viewpoint reveal a disturbing sense of irony as well as exposing a human perspective of one of the most routine daily experiences of every Palestinian.

In Rana Bishara’s ‘Cactus’ series the symbolic use of the cactus, (a plant that can survive in almost all conditions and because of its tenacious roots can grow wherever you plant it) stands as a potent reference to the resilience of the Palestinian people despite continuous years of hardship and forced expulsion. Bishara readdresses the cactus throughout her career, using it as a language of the land.

The power of the photograph itself cannot be overlooked. Its ability to capture the moment or event, to trigger memory, or to convey a new memory, embodies far more than its materiality.

With images wielding such tremendous power and in a land whose inhabitants cling so strongly to the solid memory of its lost ancestry, it is the images themselves that will endure and remain.

apeture 27,000
1 = © Paula Harrowing
2 = © Paula Harrowing
3 = © Paula Harrowing

 

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