Alt Art Space presents installation
ISTANBUL
Along with other young people, Abbas and Abou-Rahme have visited ruins of Palestinian villages, now overgrown with indigenous plants, nature reclaiming these spaces.
The installation consists of two parts. One is a five-channel immersive video installation, with sound and strange small objects that can be used to build or destroy a place. The content of the video is a visceral journey to the wrecks of former Palestinian towns and villages, transference of the experience of re-visiting the wrecks.
The second part is made up of a new sound work and an expanded collection of materials. The sound is conceived as a conversation between the artists about their trips to these ruins, “which are still alive, almost possessed despite a colonial logic.”
“Over time, these sites are transforming, revealing a relationship between colonialism and the domination of nature/ecology/landscape, which resists this domination,” the artists said. The materials include images, books, diagrams, found objects, dried plants, rocks, and 3D printed mask-sculptures. The masks circle back to the diving-mask in a poem, becoming a symbol of empowerment and protection with mythical-power.
“Neolithic masks found in the West Bank and stored in private collections are hacked and 3D-printed,” the artist duo wrote about the masks featured in their work, saying, “Copies circulate in Palestine, eerily akin to a black ski mask. A group of youth wears them at the site of a destroyed Palestinian village in Israel.”
The installation can be seen through April 16.