I Participated through an open call of Tadafuq; an artistic program developed in Palestine, supported by several local and European institutions, for which it gathers Young artists from fragmented geopolitical compartments inside and outside Palestine. Tadafuq seeks to overcome physical borders and arbitrary checkpoints through artistic expression, an exhibition held in Casa Árabe in Madrid, Spain. In which audience were able to see diverse realms from the Palestinian artists perspectives.
Photos and videos are by the Artist, August 2023.
My Videoart piece, Around our Hands, addresses the work of hand-spinning natural wool, as a local resource and craft in Palestine that is collapsing as a result of the colonization of the material, a widespread form of the Israeli occupation. The Israeli pastoral settlement is seizing Palestinian lands, poisoning and stealing sheep and displacing thousands of Palestinians out of their lands; this ongoing silent regime forcibly detaches Palestinians from their natural resources.
Photos and videos are by the Artist, August 2023.
To disturb this silence, I conducted successive interviews with several women from different regions of Palestine who mastered weaving but stopped. I asked them about the process, the time, the material, and the collective effort they put into spinning and weaving one single Palestinian ‘Hujrah’ rug. Over the last three years, I have collected footage from Palestinian women asking them about their lives. However, when I interviewed Basma Zubaidat, a grandmother of a friend of mine who has Alzheimer’s disease how she used to spin wool (a regular question that I keep asking many women), Basma’s first reaction was similar to a reflex as she rolled her hand on her thigh which inspired me to do this video art piece.
And the result was a successive interviews of the women describing the same method even though they don’t know each other but all perform the same hand movements. The video art was curated by Marta Ramos-Yzquierdo and exhibited at Casa Árabe from 21 September 2023 to 11 February 2024 in Madrid, along with the 14 Palestinian artists from diaspora, Gaza and the west bank and the Occupied Palestine. Followed by a round table to mark the presence in Madrid with me and Motasem Siam, three days before the closing of the exhibition.
A series of talks and presentations with the museums of Reina Sophia‘ team and another one with the fellow students of the art masters of Escuela Universitaria de Artes TAI at art residency Nave Oporto, where also I showcase the story of Woolwoman as an art and design practise at the occupied Palestinian context. Around our hands Video art also has been exhibited again at the Residency of Nave Oporto celebration opening in February 2024, and the visitors react with the video and start to redo the language of hand movements.
The video art was also exhibited at Cineteca Madrid followed by a round talk with the audience, the round discussion led by Karim Hauser, and the coordinator artist Nicloas Comparro.
The national Spanish TV rtvenoticias has interviewed me at inland Campo Adentro, which is my artist residence that took place in February 2024 , and funded By TEJA Redespacios , the Solidarity initiative of the artistic and cultural sector. Where I learnt Spanish methods of wool making as well connected to many other textile artists while in my residence in Madrid and talking about the wool journey.
