Khalil Rabah: What is not
4 March - 4 July 2022, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE. Overview of the artist's ongoing projects since the 1990s. Curator: Hoor Al Qasimi.
For an optimal view of our website, please rotate your tablet horizontally.
Act I: Carving, 2012
From 'In this issue: statement concerning the institutional history of the museum', 2011–2012.
Granite stone, wood, metal; 120 × 220 × 320 cm
Installation view: What is not, Sharjah Art Foundation, 2022.
In this issue: statement concerning the institutional history of the museum is a work in newsletter format that looks at the performance record of the Palestinian Museum and is expressed in four iterations.
Act I, Carving, presents the title of the newsletter as engraved text in a heavy, black granite stone. Act II, Painting, recreates each leaf of the 24-page newsletter into a large oil on canvas, photorealistic painting, which is installed on an archival rack system. Act III, Molding, features the title of the work as a neon light and Act IV Printing includes the placement of the printed edition of the newsletter in the gallery, allowing visitors to take a copy with them.
Through performing monumentalisation (architecture and scale), knowledge production and dissemination (education), and archival protocols (storage and display), each presentation allows deliberations on how works 'about' the museum can also create an anatomy 'of' the museum itself. The newsletter as a standalone also enacts multiple purposes: on the one hand, compiling real-life activities of the museum for record-keeping and information sharing; and on the other hand, manipulating institutional structures to generate content for a fictional resource platform.
© Booklet Khalil Rabah: What is not
Sharjah Art Foundation, 2022
© Photo: Danko Stjepanovic. Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation
4 March - 4 July 2022, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE. Overview of the artist's ongoing projects since the 1990s. Curator: Hoor Al Qasimi.