Film & Video (Film & Video)

In May 2014, Israeli soldiers shot and killed two teenagers, Nadeem Nawara and Mohamad Abu Daher in occupied Palestine (West Bank). Through the Forensic Architecture program, the human rights organization Defence for Children International worked with Abu Hamdan to investigate the incident. The case hinged upon an audio-ballistic analysis of the recorded gunshots to determine whether the soldiers had used rubber bullets, as they asserted, or broken the law by firing live ammunition at the two unarmed teenagers.

Photography (Photography)

Ropes

Textile (Textile)

A “mata ni pachedi” is a piece of painted textile that depicts narrative images of goddesses. Traditionally, the images would be painted onto a piece of cloth found in the temple. Also known as the “kalamkari” (a hand-painted or block-printed cotton textile), “mata ni pachedi” literally translates to “behind the mother goddess”.

Photography (Photography)

Back images is a series of six photographs by Sarah Lei Cheuk Wah that explore the semiotics of power and their intersection with representations of masculinity. The photographs feature what seem to be stock images of several policemen—their rugged uniforms, vehicles and weapons drenching the photographs with signs of masculinity and power as the policemen carry on with their usual tasks. The series was part of a larger exhibition entitled In Stasis where Lei transformed the booth of an art fair into what appeared to be a security area inside an airport.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Throughout his career, Marwan Rechmaoui has maintained a drawing practice. During the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns the artist spent his evenings recording thoughts and imagery on paper, inspired by events happening around him, music, his garden, and the news. These drawings are contemporaneous in their concerns and are indexical of a destitute time and space in the aesthetics they conjure.

NFT (NFT)

For his first NFT release artist Walid Raad made a series of animated birthday cakes, titled Festival of Gratitude , for some of the world’s most toxic and larger-than-life leaders. The series of looping three-dimensional animated videos are only seconds long—a timespan familiar to gif and online meme culture—and feature global dictators, strongmen and strongwomen, kings and queens, princes and princesses, emirs, sheikhs and sheikhas, sultans, shahs, emperors and empresses, popes, ayatollahs, presidents, prime ministers, CEOs, and GOATs. The subject of cakes has a specific personal meaning for Raad, whose first job as an adolescent was photographing pastries at a bakery in Beirut.

Installation (Installation)

Milton Friedman on the wonder of the free market pencil is an installation based on 42 blank pages. On the first page, one can read the original version in English of the liberal speech by Milton Friedman on “The Story of the pencil”. On the other pages, the same text has been translated into 41 different languages by using Google Translate, before coming back to English.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Les Chenilles by Michelle and Noël Keserwany is a sensual film that translates the source of women’s oppression into the means for their liberation. In this narrative film, protagonists Asma and Sarah meet while working as waitresses in France. They both come from the Levant and, each in their own way, carry burdens of the past and the consequences of colonialism.