More than any other, Wafa’s piece: Wisdom of The Crowd, inspired by the mathematical theory of the same name, brings our connectedness to the fore.
“I’ve been thinking about what is going to connect us in the future,” he tells me. “The beauty of the theory is that it shows that we are connected whether we accept it or not. If we are in a crowd, we are connected – and we are connected by the crowd of the universe.”
Facing life in Ramallah - Optics and making:
By Phoebe West for Shado
Wisdom of the Crowd
Darker than the Sun
The Stamp that Remain
Mapping of the Old City of Jerusalem made from postage stamps from the Arab World in the early 1960s. A light silver wire draws the walls of the Old City, silk threads weave the gates and the roads, the garden of Al Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of Rock, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Western Wall, the Armenian Museum and Damascus Gate. The postage stamps show the character of the Old City and refer to the identity. Here Jerusalem is not recognised as the capital of Israel, but as the capital of Palestine, and the essence of the Arab World since forever.
In nature a river divides the borders between two countries; hence, a map is drawn of two banks for the geography to appear before history. On the other hand, colonization graphs military borders for history to reappear before geography. Exhibiting history before geography supposes a realistic proposition. Contrary to such objectified geography is a proposition based on nature, to form universe imagination. As if reality is war and nature is fiction. Read more
“Then I realized I had been murdered. They looked for me in cafes, cemeteries, and churches .... but they did not find me. They never found me? No. They never found me
”From "The Fable And Round of the Three Friends", Poet in New York (1939), Garcia Lorca
For every numerator, there is a denominator to be divided by
If my numerator and my denominator were the same
I would be divided by myself to become one that cannot be divided and hence disappear
This perfection in nothingness with the absence of infinity and creation
This mask has two eyes
An eye for you and an eye to watch on you
The Mirror Party
2069
The Mirror Party celebrated their 50th Anniversary by creating The Mirror Garden, a garden with a big hand mirror where people can look at themselves while removing the laser lights from the Wall after the International Criminal Court ruled in their favour.
From Qalandia 2047 practice | Read more
The Lions of Ramallah
The Statue Revolution
The political scene in Palestine is seen here through a portrait artist in the city centre of Ramallah. It is customary that portrait artists in cities reflect public opinion and history in the form of icons. This can implicate both contradiction and unity at the same time. For instance, there is a photo of President Yasser Arafat in a black frame, next to it a photo of Jesus Christ with a smaller photo of Hasan Nasrallah attached to it with paper clips. ... Read more
A very detailed scale model of how the artist visualizes everyday life in a Palestinian camp adjacent to the most important checkpoint that controls access to Ramallah. This is an image with lots of humour, although not without a certain bitterness, where beautiful cars move around on a backdrop of large mirror panels hanging on the separation wall just to give an illusion of space to those cooped up in there, in constant expectation of a change.
The Only and Lonely Mosque is an architectural model accompanied by sculpture and photography for an imaginary mosque. Hundreds of photographs were gathered of mosques from all over the world, cut and pasted to create unity between cultures, including architecture and art among all Muslims. Read more
Here is the geography of the prehistoric, a geographic trip along the palm of life illustrating Earth's history and the mystery of Palestine. I base my statement on the sacred book from a time older than the old, on the book Sahih Darwish, and astrology, the science fiction physiognomy of the hand of life and the reading of her palm. Herewith I explain that Palestine is a triangle drawn by the fourth line “the line of war” on life's palm, a cradle of human civilization since eternity and the truth for the centre of the universe. Read more
A. The distance between the first car and the last car queuing at the checkpoint is directly proportional to the distance between the last car that has passed the checkpoint and the checkpoint.
B. The tension of the checkpoint is directly proportional to the friction between the driver and the soldier, and the distance of the last car that has passed the checkpoint and the checkpoint.
C. The rate of change in the mood of the driver is directly proportional to the rate of change in the driver's position
D. Regarding the driver’s inertia:
The rate of change in the soldier's mood is inversely proportional to the rate of change in the driver’s position in the queue.
E. Regarding an individual with no ID:
The rate of change of inertia is sufficiently close to zero.
Miniatures, monuments, and secrets: notes on the work of artist Wafa Hourani - By Lara Khaldi
The monument and the time vertigo
The image on the invitation card for this exhibition was taken from inside one of the sculptures Darwin was Palestinian which is an anthropomorphic form made out of wire and silk thread. While Wafa Hourani’s depiction of Palestinian cities or refugee camps is in miniature, inversely the characters living in those cities are larger than life itself. Larger both in scale and in character. For instance, the characters made out of wire and thread have very tall necks, because according to a fictive Darwinian theory, the Palestinian would have grown a tall neck in order to adapt to living behind the apartheid wall and to be able to look beyond it.
Miniatures, monuments, and secrets: notes on the work of artist Wafa Hourani - By Lara Khaldi
The monument and the time vertigo
There are other large fantastical sculptural characters made out of wire, such as the London 2068, 2009 another monument, but this time in the form of a pregnant woman standing for Big Ben. Hourani claims that in 2068 the speed of the earth’s rotation ascends causing time to shrink so that the day becomes only eleven hours long. This causes Big Ben to become inaccurate and obsolete to the utter anger of the British who take pride in their monument of precision. Big Ben is replaced by a sculpture of a pregnant woman made out of wire, where the pregnancy is proof of the movement of time.
If Art can carry part of the collective memory and some responsibilities of a nation, I think to make an atmospheric artwork, an illusionary scene, and it has to be a minimum of real in it, to let the content reach easier to the public and involve them, a dark scene full of imaginary layers that can take the position of the public in the exhibition to experience the social and political complexity in Palestine.
There are many possible ways in the photography and the Cinema Archive frames to reconstruct the demolished cinema hall and the cinema archive in Palestine.
Mohammad Al Aswad, “Guevara Gaza,” was a leader of the Front in Gaza. Born on January 6, 1946, he joined the Arab Nationalist Movement at an early age and continued into the PFLP with its founding. He was martyred in a fierce battle with occupation forces on March 9, 1973.
The installation Qalandia 2087 (2009) is the third in a series of future projections of Qalandia military checkpoint and refugee camp. Established in 1949, the Qalandia camp is home to over 10,000 Palestinian refugees. Qalandia checkpoint, one of the largest Israeli military checkpoints in the West Bank, over the years has become increasingly high-tech and when the Israeli army closes it, Palestinians can neither enter nor leave Ramallah. Ironically, until 1967 Qalandia used to be the site of Jerusalem airport.
Istanbul Biennale 11 - Curator: WHW
Wafa Hourani is a Palestinian artist living and working in Ramallah. Combining photography and sculpture his Future Cities projects deal with the social, political, and economic realities of Palestinian life to develop grim and apocalyptic predictions for the residents of the West Bank. Qalandia 2067 takes its name from the main checkpoint crossing through the West Bank Security Fence which divides the cities of Ramallah and ar-Ram; it is a site of political unrest and human rights concerns....
The Saatchi Gallery - Unveiled
A large number of photographs have also been cut out and pasted to create “Qalandia 2047”, a very detailed scale model of how the artist visualizes everyday life in a Palestinian camp adjacent to the most important checkpoint that controls access to Ramallah in 2047 (that is, one hundred years after the camp’s residents were evicted from their homes following the division of Palestine in 1947). This is an image with lots of humor, although not without a certain bitterness, where beautiful cars move around on a backdrop of large mirror panels hanging on the separation wall just to give an illusion of space to those cooped up in there, in constant expectation of a change.
Catherine David