http://nadour.org/artwork en wellsdjohn@gmail.com Copyright 2012 2012-02-07T11:42:23+00:00 /collection/taysir-batniji-hannoun /collection/taysir-batniji-hannoun#When:11:42:23Z Hannoun was thought – beyond any political or geographical concern – as an ideal space, a space of meditation, of dream, an intimate sphere, light, fragile yet imposing at the same time…an impenetrable space…inaccessible…mirroring my "Atelier" in Gaza. This artwork has been created for the 1st Palestinian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale (June, 2009). The Hannoun project (poppy in Palestinian dialect) is based on scattering red pencil shavings on the ground. The red shavings suggest the appearance of a field of poppies: an impalpable landscape that one observes as in a dream from an un-crossable vantage point. This piece follows several performative projects, undertaken in the last few years that evoke notions of memory, erasure, non-being, and destruction/construction or (deconstruction /restitution). Each of these “acted shapes” is the result of obsessional, repetitive, and often useless or absurd gestures. In Palestinian consciousness and literature, the poppy has often been associated with the memory of freedom fighters. Despite this obvious symbolism,and especially through the repetitive act of pencil sharpening, Hannoun relates to a childhood memory. At school, to make sure we learnt our lessons we had to copy them by hand with a pencil, many times, especially during the holidays. Unconsciously trying to escape this exercise, I would spend my time sharpening pencils, under the pretext that they were never sharp enough. Invariably, I would skip my homework. Hannoun was thought  – beyond any political or geographical concern – as an ideal space, a space of meditation, of dream, an intimate sphere, light, fragile yet imposing at the same time…an impenetrable space…inaccessible…mirroring my Atelier (22.06.2006-07.06.2009) in Gaza. Barely had the construction of my atelier in Gaza been completed in 2001, I had to leave again. Each year, when I return home (which is no longer possible since the borders were closed by the Israelis in 2006), I open my studio, abandoned ever since, go over my things and clear the dust on the ground. By then, it would be time to leave again, and the atelier is closed once more. Gaza has become a real yet unreachable place of production. Paris, or elsewhere, offers the possibility of production without the physical space to realize it. Just as an atelier is a space in which to elaborate, construct and work, Hannoun is “the attempt of an oeuvre” where what we perceive is not so much a finished product but rather the traces of its possible realization. Taysir Batniji, co-written with Sophie Jaulmes Translated by Carole Corm. Installation, Performance 2012-02-07T11:42:23+00:00 /collection/taysir-batniji-suspended-time /collection/taysir-batniji-suspended-time#When:20:17:15Z ... between presence and absence, impermanence and constancy, immobility and itinerancy, deconstruction and restitution. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.  Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. Article 13, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) A far cry from the exploitative imagery used by the media, Taysir Batniji puts forward an interpretation distanced from events that mark out the situation in his country of origin, events which have prevented his return to Gaza since June 2006.  Continuing the theme of a series of works produced by the artist since that historic date, Suspended Time is witness to a suspended reality, symbolized here by an hourglass placed on it side, which prevents the grains of sand from flowing freely.  From this constrained condition which is a part of everyday life for the Palestinians, and takes account of the complexity of such a restrictive existence upon the individual, Taysir Batniji has developed a work in dialogue with a socio-political theme determined by a relationship conditional to space and time. In the same way, Man cannot live by bread alone (2007) recalls the essential right of all individuals regarding the freedom of movement, a freedom expressed by Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and in which the chocolate inscription melts before its disappearance.  Also, Untitled (2007) shows a glass copy of the bunch of keys used by the artist before his departure from Gaza, a fragile trophy from a past existence to which he can never return.  Echoing the collective dispossession of land in 1948, since which date the Palestinians have preserved the keys of their houses in the hope of one day returning, Untitled (1997) also expresses the difficulty of a life of enforced itinerancy, here evoked by the imprints of rusty keys on rolled canvases.  To the eventalism of the narrative, Taysir Batniji prefers the more poetic, and no less conceptual dimension, of an artistic approach which avoids the clichés of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to better represent some aspects of it: a conflict between presence and absence, impermanence and constancy, immobility and itinerancy, deconstruction and restitution. Vérane Pina Translated by Theodora Taylor Sculpture 2012-01-24T20:17:15+00:00 /collection/taysir-batniji-transit /collection/taysir-batniji-transit#When:11:01:35Z As Israeli forces arbitrarily limit the number of entries per day, passengers crowd on Egyptian side of the border. So then begins the waiting which can last a day to weeks sometimes… Filming or taking pictures in transit areas between Egypt and Gaza is forbidden. The lack of images due to this fact is underlined in this video by the editing: still images hurriedly taken, irregularly punctuated with blank spaces (blacks), appear as a slide show, the only sound dimension is the noise of the slide projector. As a conclusion, a unique sequence in movement (in slow-motion). Transit, made in September 2004, deals with the conditions of the difficult, or even the impossible mobility of Palestinians nowadays. In recent years, especially since the beginning of the second Intifada in 2001, Rafah is the only way to enter or leave the country. From the arrival at the airport of Cairo, men traveling alone, not allowed to move in Egypt, are taken from the passengers and kept under surveillance in basement of the airport until morning, departure time of an escorted bus to the Palestinian “border” under Egyptian and Israeli control. After almost six hours, Palestinians join men, women (of all ages) and children who wait already in Rafah. As Israeli forces arbitrarily limit the number of entries per day, passengers crowd on Egyptian side of the border. So then begins the waiting which can last a day to weeks sometimes… Conditions in this earth port are difficult especially during summer (heat, tiredness, humiliation, precarious conditions of hygiene…) Transit is part of a reflection I have led since 1997 on notions of involuntary or voluntary displacements and travels. I am especially interested in the state of in-between: in-between identities, in-between cultures...  The video Transit consists in a work of counter-information about a city at the border of Israel, Palestine and Egypt. Rafah, unknown to the global media, hits the local headlines daily. Unauthorized video-maker, passenger among passengers, I distinguish myself from a reporter because I do not represent any government or ideology. The fixed images clumsily framed which slowly follow one another and where nothing happens except the wait of the passengers, are also in contradiction with the spectular events hunted down by the mass media emissaries. Nonetheless, I try to document a current issue from the inside: the life of Palestinians (and others) who try every day to cross a border sealed by the power of a military control. Taysir Batniji Text edited by Sophie Jaulmes. Video 2012-01-02T11:01:35+00:00 /collection/manal-al-dowayan-landscape-of-the-mind /collection/manal-al-dowayan-landscape-of-the-mind#When:21:24:01Z By associating objectivity and fantasy, the individual’s perception and the collective imagination, a feminine viewpoint and a masculine organisation of space, Manal Al-Dowayan highlights the part of construction in reading a landscape. The surrealists substituted the “interior landscape” for the romantic idea of landscape as a “state of the soul”.  Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy represented dreams and the unconscious as deserts, punctuated with figures and objects. Strange and ghostly, the images in the series Landscapes of the Mind belong at first glance to this tradition. The eclecticism of the series evokes the disruption of a surrealist collage: over photographs of views of her region, the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, the artist has affixed codified motifs from other styles ; women in black veils, compressed silhouettes, imposed figures of all media representation of the kingdom.  Eyes and made-up mouths floating in the sky, rising index of women’s hands dyed with henna, monumental, on top of a mountain or a petrol tank,  doves, palm trees.  How is this for exoticism? The repetition of these signs, symbols of glamour recalls the seriality reminiscent of Pop Art, while the landscapes which make up the background of the images are arid, “without qualities” and difficult to interpret. With her montage, Manal Al Dowayan, confronts her personal vision of these landscapes, fed by her own experience, with that of an observer of the outside, a foreigner, troubled by projections and stereotypes.  It is also about underlining the absence of autonomy, of visibility and of freedom of speech for women, in this oil-producing region but also throughout the kingdom.  The mouths and pointed fingers are emblems for speech and the affirmation of self, the doves represent liberty.  By associating objectivity and fantasy, the individual’s perception and the collective imagination, a feminine viewpoint and a masculine organisation of space, Manal Al-Dowayan highlights the part of construction in reading a landscape. Irène Burkel Translated by Theodora Taylor Photography 2011-12-18T21:24:01+00:00 /collection/saadane-afif-national-glasgow /collection/saadane-afif-national-glasgow#When:17:09:36Z A revolution of fear: it is not others who threaten us but a world which no longer functions except by the manipulation of forms and images up to saturation point. In National  (Glasgow), it is the force of the symbol which instantly strikes the viewer  which appears to  have  been assembled almost by accident , randomly,  with three  pieces of clothing strung  up end-to-end like washing hung out to dry. The three colours act as an immediate reference to the French flag – the title, National (the Glasgow part signifying simply where it was made), leaves no doubt as to the subject. The impersonal and derisory nature of the elements used:  two tops and a football shirt, suggest contempt for the possible identity referred to by the flag’s colours; the nation represented by purely market values offers an ironic and literal interpretation about diversity – under the guise of a plurality of sartorial styles.  The identity linked to the flag could be itself reduced to the appearance that is nothing more than coincidental. Saâdane Afif, by limiting to a minimum any signs of his own intervention, lets the simplicity of his forms work by enabling the unexpected and brutal outburst of a question of burning topicality.  By opposing the simplistic views which have already set the rules about the question of what makes a nation – and those connected to it– nationality, rights, fear of others - he raises a conflicting view: the importance of uncovering something substantial beneath the basic  symbolism. The piece thus risks reaching a conclusion whereby the elements which assure cohesion of our community behind the images are exhausted.  A revolution of fear:  it is not others who threaten us but a world which no longer functions except by the manipulation of forms and images up to saturation point. Michaël Verger-Laurent Translated Theodora Taylor Installation 2011-11-24T17:09:36+00:00 /collection/self-portrait-with-roots-los-angeles /collection/self-portrait-with-roots-los-angeles#When:16:02:25Z I started observing my life as if I was in a cinema... watching and witnessing every minute of my own movie. The movie was set and written before I entered the theater, and now it is time just to sit and watch. Youssef Nabil – Alexandria 31, 2007 Having roamed far from Cairo, his native city to which he remains deeply attached, Youssef Nabil preserves the memory of particular moments in a series of self portraits resembling the pages of a photo-story.  Across postcard landscapes, the artist places himself in the shot in order to tell a story, his story, becoming the protagonist of a pre-written scenario, whereas the moment registered on film keeps the course of a destiny irrevocably linked to his own end.  Following a fragmented existence which unfolds before the spectator, Youssef Nabil conjures up the towns which he passes through as indeterminate spaces which can only be identified by the title.  Thus, Self Portrait with Roots, Los Angeles preserves the memory of his presence in the Californian city and of an ancient tree a few steps from his hotel. Beyond the autobiographical story, the artist reveals some of the existential themes which drive his work: notably that of exile, which seem to lead him toward some undefined faraway place, and the impermanence of an existence that he desires to complete in a different time.   A black and white silver gelatin print, painted by hand to bring an almost dreamlike colour to it; Self Portrait with Roots, Los Angeles represents a self –portrait of the artist, a naked body, coiled in the hollow of the tree, resting in a slumber which seems to flirt with death.  In a style which crosses over between photography and painting, Youssef Nabil shows how attached he is to his homeland, by the symbolic use of the tree roots, which seem to issue endlessly from the tree with which he communes. A nostalgic testimony to the close connection that he still has with Egypt, his work transcends the notions of space and time in order to evoke the course of a nomadic existence magnified for all eternity. Verane Pina Translated by Theodora Taylor Photography 2011-10-23T16:02:25+00:00 /collection/Sama-al-shaibi-sweep-video /collection/Sama-al-shaibi-sweep-video#When:09:58:30Z She was sweeping away her past, and journeying over the deleted traces with a brush of unfulfilled promises. Passing through the movement of a soft breeze in a deserted landscape, enters a female heroine reserved by a black dress; decoratively overlaid, socially underexposed, and camouflaged by the contrast of her veil in a magnificent drapery of light barren land combined with a fertile form of darkened puberty. She enters from the right side of the feathered framed image, sweeping away the markings left behind. Her footsteps are her traits, her traces are her history, and her sweepings are her fortunes. The feminine disguise suggesting an ethnologic identity, a social conformity to possibly a region, a people, a belonging of sorts that resolve the markings of territory; an authority of boundary, a sandscape with endless peripheries that seem to occupy a mass but not a magnitude of land. Sama Alshaibi once again presents us with that frequent solitude of a common presence. Brushing away her forwarding movements, along with those that precede her initial markings, she could not have established a more fundamental wealth to the existence of mankind; without exposing all of man, without devouring all of man’s land, without occupying all of his nothingness only to realize that history was being deleted only for its repetition and not for its significance of veracity. She was sweeping away her past, and journeying over the deleted traces with a brush of unfulfilled promises. Sweep is seen through a black box, a window of surveillance, overlooking and overseeing a trying authority over the motions of obliteration. Observing a motioning body, through a steady land, there comes a realization that nothing really grows; nothing really changes, but only the removal of a stamp, a resignation of direction, a remarking of moments gone by and then forgotten. Forgotten by choice and by desire. The past lays quiet, unresolved, and the heroine departs through the same way she entered. Aida Eltorie Video 2011-09-24T09:58:30+00:00 /collection/Sirine-Fattouh-a-night-in-beirut /collection/Sirine-Fattouh-a-night-in-beirut#When:17:51:20Z ... for the artist, this voice was once a terrifying and mystic sound that broke sharply during the nights of the holy month of Ramadan, creating numerous fantasy stories in the minds of young children. Sirine Fattouh’s inquisitive eye creates a hulling atmosphere of seemingly ordinary surroundings while constantly raising pressing political and social questions to those who are the least heard and given voice to. In one of her early videos, A Night in Beirut, the artist follows a man in a white robe, “El Tabbal” [1] , for the first time after years of hearing him but never seeing his face during her childhood spent in Beirut before moving to Paris. Fattouh explains the trigger for this video was to put a face on a voice that was once a terrifying and mystic sound that broke sharply during the nights of the holy month of Ramadan, creating numerous fantasy stories in the minds of young children. The sobriety of treatment in the video hits like a poignant reality; stripped from any aesthetic manipulation, it brings out an eerie space accentuated by the obscurity of the surroundings but also by the abstruseness of the act itself in a place and time marked by “modernization”. Close up shots reveal the artist’s desire to identify and expose this mysterious figure in his hypnotic circular track; the person facing the camera looks like a simple man who’s familiarity with the filmed neighborhood and its inhabitants conveys a nostalgic lens, acting as a documentary that wishes to archive the memory of disappearing rituals and with it the dissipation of recognizable elements of everyday life in a changed city. Mayssa Fattouh [1] El Tabbal is the one who passes in the city streets with a drum to invite the inhabitants to wake-up have breakfast and pray to prepare for a new day of fasting.   Video 2011-08-04T17:51:20+00:00 /collection/moataz-nasr-under-fire /collection/moataz-nasr-under-fire#When:22:51:52Z The map that stands for the territory, matches to rekindle the dangerous game in which we are engaged, and fire, at once playful, expiatory and definitive. It is an obvious fact, almost a cliché, that fire contains a power with two faces. On the one hand, the magic of a bonfire, of a firework, of the fire in the hearth around which the family gathers to listen to stories on winter evenings, the fire of survival and life. On the other the destructive force that consumes everything in its path and leaves nothing but ashes. The God of the Christians had warned Noah after the Flood: ‘no more water, fire next time!’ Life was not completely wiped out by the Flood. Nature can resist water, independently of human beings. But fire spares nothing. God’s threat was explicit: the Flood was the last chance. The final warning before the total annihilation of all life on earth. What has been happening in the Middle East for some years and more specifically in Iraq reminds us of the sword of Damocles that has been hanging over humanity since the dawn of time. As if Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not been sufficient, the rain of fire and sword, and of blood, continues to fall on the men and women who have had the misfortune to be born in one place rather than another. An absurdity, an injustice that the artist transforms into an end-of-the-world geography. The map that stands for the territory, matches to rekindle the dangerous game in which we are engaged, and fire, at once playful, expiatory and definitive. There is no redemption to be sought. All that remains is the desolation of those matches bent by the scourge, like a devastated forest. A simple match, the metaphor is accurate, would be enough to destroy the beauty of the world. And the worst of it is that the event never ceases to fascinate us, like children who do not understand the lethal games of adults and of the gods of whom we are the willing playthings. Simon Njami Installation, Video, Performance 2011-06-15T22:51:52+00:00 /collection/utopia-asgar-gabriel /collection/utopia-asgar-gabriel#When:09:25:03Z The painting Utopia by Asgar/Gabriel is inspired by the conceptualised void in the lexical field of the Persian language in which the word “Utopia” does not exist. The painting Utopia by Asgar/Gabriel is inspired by the conceptualised void in the lexical field of the Persian language in which the word “Utopia” does not exist.  While the term has been translated into other languages, it appears curiously absent from the Persian dictionary. Studying the notion of Utopia and its linguistic usage, the artists wished to integrate it into the Persian language as an inscription in Farsi writing which appears in this picture of imposing dimensions (260 x 450cm).  With reference to the famous socio-political essay (1) by Thomas More (1478-1535), the work is inspired by the genesis of a mysterious island named Utopia.  A place not found anywhere, yet a place of happiness according to its double Greek root (2).  The island appears as a fictional land, the idealised model of which has become the subject of a fantastical narrative. Between a Dionysiac scene and a post-apocalyptic scenario, Utopia presents the expression of a generation who lack the shelter of ideology in search of a new heroism. Whilst the dreams of communal life of the ‘sixties and ‘seventies are now archive material, the piece revisits the vestiges of a hippy culture taken up by a hedonistic youth.  From the mythological theme to the Bacchanal, the picture presents a scene of young naked ephebes who feature as an ornamental motif like a frame set outlining the canvas. Whilst an allusion to the mysteries of Bacchus can also be found, the piece stages chosen characters in a dramatised performance, constructed out of snapshots and personal photographs.  From the glorification of holidays beside water to new world exploration to survivors on a desert island, Utopia can be understood as the utterance of a fictional narrative.  Oil on a large format canvas, the painting produced in brushwork and by finger work travels the course of history of art, from Baroque to Romanticism and touching on Pop Art.  Behind the mythological representation of a Rubens or a Tiepolo, you can perceive the tragedy evoked by Gericault’s famous painting (3), while the use of brilliant colours offers a sweetened vision of a generation in search of a common ideal. Vérane Pina Translated by Théodora Taylor [1] Utopia (Libellus vere aureus nec minus salutaris quam festivo de optimo statu rei publicae deque nova insula Utopia) appeared in 1516 [2] « Utopia » is neologism invented by Thomas More from the double greek root u-topos meaning literally the « no-place », the « not-placed », even the« unplaceable » and eu-topos meaning « place of happiness » [3]  The Raft of the Medusa (1819) Painting 2011-05-12T09:25:03+00:00