Khalil Rabah: What is not
4. März - 4. Juli 2022, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah Art Foundation, VAE. Überblick über seit den 1990er Jahren laufende Projekte des Künstlers. Kuratorin: Hoor Al Qasimi.
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On what grounds, 2022
From 'Collaborations: by in form', 2010–2022
Handwoven wool rugs, cement tiles; dimensions variable.
Installation view: What is not, Sharjah Art Foundation, 2022.
Collaborations: by in form is a three-storey structure representing Rabah’s unfinished home in Ramallah, which the artist proposes as a site and instigator for multidisciplinary activities that prioritise artistic gesture over institutional responsibility. By conceptualising a collaboration between two of the artist’s longest ongoing projects—the Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind and the Riwaq Biennale—it activates On what grounds, a new project commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation.
The work makes use of the Museum’s Botanical Department collection of natural dyes extracted from the flora of the villages that have disappeared, and those that still remain; and the natural pigments archived by the Geology Department. These elements are utilised to illustrate prototypes of village homes, using survey documents from the archives of the Riwaq Biennale.
The installation features five geometric islands on the floor constructed entirely of hundreds of piled tiles stacked in varying heights, reflecting the sloping topography of the land. Each mass is shaped to represent the plan of a room, the five coming together to form the foundations of a traditional Palestinian domestic space. Imprinted on top with pigments are the floorplans of these homes. The empty spaces between the island-rooms symbolise walls; once offering fortification and privacy, now laid open to walk through.
On top of the foundations, suspended from the ceiling, is a hanging display of hand-embroidered carpets that represent the site plans of village homes, coloured with the dyes of the flora that once surrounded them. Together, the ground and sky turn the gaze upside down on what Rabah calls the remains and the remaining.
On what grounds navigates the possibilities of collaborating between the Museum and the Biennale, and challenging their individual strategies to evolve and discover the potential for creating something entirely new; belonging to neither, but generated by both.
© Booklet Khalil Rabah: What is not
Sharjah Art Foundation, 2022
© Photo: Danko Stjepanovic. Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation
4. März - 4. Juli 2022, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah Art Foundation, VAE. Überblick über seit den 1990er Jahren laufende Projekte des Künstlers. Kuratorin: Hoor Al Qasimi.