In an attempt to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks, the State of Israel has built a concrete “Wall of Separation”, hundreds of kilometers long, in the West Bank region. The Wall aims to separate Palestinian territories from Jewish-populated areas, but many times it separates Palestinians from their arable land, or even from neighboring towns or even schools, consequentially causing suffering to thousands of innocent Palestinian residents. As a side effect, the wall turns the inhabitants of one side into an anonymous crowd – for those living on its other side. 

 

Anonymity, as an inseparable part of the human psychological-political texture, takes form as a wall of armor in the gallery space, a human shield of large dimensions composed of dozens of scales as a blank faces, void of expression. Only the mouth has been designed, distorted as if craving to utter the truth, or refusing to speak it out.

 

Each scale was handcrafted by me using a traditional paper-making technique that has been practiced for over 300 years and is still used at a traditional paper-making workshop located in a Druze village in the Western Galilee region of Israel. The paper pulp was mixed with cement and ground together in a unique and labor-intensive process, a tribute to the Arab construction worker, for whom concrete has become an integral part of his identity in Israel.

 

Originally this work was shown in an exhibition curated by Prof. Sharon Poliakine, in a cultural historic space located in an Arab building in Haifa and shared by an Arab and Jewish community. It was created before October 7, 2023, an additional chapter in the ongoing and unending tragedy of two bleeding nations.

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Deadlines / Concrete, 2019-2020

Hand made paper ground with cement

Each piece: 50x70cm

Installation view in the Kranjčar Gallery, Zagreb, 2023