‘Irrational’
2003
ArteEast is pleased to present the work of Jerusalem-based artist Rula Halawani. Halawani’s photographic explorations of life in Palestine have been shown all over the world, most recently at the Sharjah Biennial. This exhibition features four series of works, each exploring different facets of the sensory experience of occupation through a manipulation of frames, focus, film negatives, and the photographer’s position. Halawani takes us from the intimacies of document-passing at checkpoint inspections to the crude inviolability of the separation wall, and from the settlements’ ongoing disruption of the visible landscape to the extreme burst of sensory assault that accompanies invasions. She changes a medium that has so often been used to “fix” and “document” (Middle Eastern life especially) into one that reveals both the unsettling process of occupation and the powerful role of documentation within it. By working with experience and process, Halawani gives us a personal interpretation of the conflict which defies the standard artistic, political, and even military attempts to define it and thereby fix its meaning.
Rula Halawani works and resides in Jerusalem, Palestine. Contact: rhalawani@birzeit.edu
