Basel Abbas
2021At Those Terrifying Frontiers Where the Existence and Disappearance of People Fade into Each Other
Basel Abbas, Ruanne Abou-Rahme
Hybrid in form, this work from Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme wrestles with the problematics of representing a people displaced and disappeared. An avatar generating software and images of the people who participated in the Great March of Return demonstrations create figures that sing a sad lament. Voiced by the artists themselves yet digitally altered, they are, at once, human and non-human.
At Those Terrifying Frontiers Where the Existence and Disappearance of People Fade into Each Other
And Yet My Mask Is Powerful
Basel Abbas, Ruanne Abou-Rahme
Neolithic masks found in the West Bank and surrounding areas, and stored in private collections are hacked and 3D-printed. Copies circulate in Palestine, eerily akin to a black ski mask. A group of youth wear them at the site of a destroyed Palestinian village in Israel. Becoming other, becoming anonymous, in this accidental moment of ritual and myth. Initiating a series of trips to possess and almost be possessed by these strangely living sites of erasure and wreckage. Only now, returning to the site of destruction as the very site from which to cast a new projection that palpably evokes the potential of an unrealised time, not bound by the here and now or there and then. A parallel time that is not occupied, a virtual time that is not ‘our’ time.
And Yet My Mask Is Powerful
Only the Beloved Keeps Our Secrets
Basel Abbas, Ruanne Abou-Rahme
Only the Beloved Keeps Our Secrets invites us to consider the forms of entanglement between the destruction of bodies and the erasure of images, and the conditions under which these same bodies and images might once again reappear. Utilising military surveillance footage, the artists create a multi-layered and shifting work.
Only the Beloved Keeps Our Secrets
