Salons - Collections of Memory and Loss
Neun Kunstinstallationen, die identitätsstiftende Objekte in den Salons palästinensischer Wohnungen untersuchen. 28. Mai – 31. Aug. 2022, A.M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah.
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The House That Never Ages
Installation
In this project, I question how memories are recreated in a new space, such as the refugee camps we Palestinians were banished to. How is this new space visually transformed to create a safe environment for refugees to express the loss of their paradise, especially the large houses, the salon, the gardens, the heavy pillars, and the ceilings (in the memory) that everyone wants to touch.
Since the Naksa (the setback or defeat of 1967), my mother and her family who are residents of al-Wihdat refugee camp in Jordan, have taken me on a journey through the stories they told, the scenes they narrated, about their private, violent, and sometimes heroic memories of Jaffa before the 1948 Nakba. These stories mixed with the details I saw in our house while growing up, and the decorations and details of my mother’s plastic flowerpot in our current house. These are not just beautiful pictures and colourful plastic flowers that pile up and multiply day by day, but rather the hope of returning to the gardens of my mother’s old house, that I heard about from my grandmother, and the garden of her grandfather’s house in Jaffa. In this way, memories are recreated there, in the new supposedly temporary space.
Mahdi Baraghithi was born in Ramallah. He works in the performative arts, installations and collage, which allows him to discover and challenge masculine representations in the Arab world, especially in Palestine. He works with such components as famous iconographies and existing material.
Baraghithi obtained his master’s degree in fine arts from ENSA, Brogues, France, in 2018, and his BA degree in visual contemporary arts from the International Academy of Art Palestine in 2015.
Baraghithi’s works have been in such exhibitions as "Lod, the Sunset Garden" (Birzeit University, 2018) and the solo exhibition "The Hegemony on Grass" (A.M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah, 2019).
© Photos, text: Artist & A. M. Qattan Foundation
Neun Kunstinstallationen, die identitätsstiftende Objekte in den Salons palästinensischer Wohnungen untersuchen. 28. Mai – 31. Aug. 2022, A.M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah.