Colour Correction - Camp Series
2007 - 2010
The trauma, the losing of the homeland in 1948, losing the vital space, the landscape, the
way of living, the potential of maintaining freedom of choice, and becoming -as Slavoj Z?iz?ek says- always in a state of emergency, where the possibility of thinking and living in the present becomes impossible.
This project is a re-production of space by using its architectural elements -that maintain the trauma- to create a space that produces the possibility for hope (hope in this sense is the ability to imagine a better future, to think of unessential events to happen, and mainly to be able to be sarcastic of the present).
Here I’m dealing with Al-Amari Refugee camp, located inside/beside/outside Ramallah city. The form of the camp doesn’t represent its economical status but rather represents its loss and trauma as a political manifestation by the continuous production of the ephemeral structures, ways of living and relation with the surround.
Changing the refugee camp’s colours is a symbolic act to fill the loss -like a child filling a coloring book- and produce the possibility of hope. Here I’m attempting to appropriate an urban landscape that reminds us of the tragedy -of their existence and our disappearance- in order to subvert memory into a desired future.
The work has been exhibited in various exhibitions (among others)
2013 Edition #1 (London, EoA Projects)
2012 Beyond the Last Sky (Australian Centre for Photography)
2012 #COMETOGETHER (London, EoA Projects)
2012 PARADISE NOW (Beursschouwburg, Brussels)
2011 The Future of a Promise (Venice Biennale)
2009 Mapping (Art Dubai)
It has also been published in different publications (among others)
Contemporary Art: World Currents (edited by: Terry Smith, Publisher: Pearson/Prentice Hall)
Subjective Atlas of Palestine (Edited and designed by Annelys de Vet, 010 publishers, 2007)