The House Murdered (2020)
(a tribute to Mahmoud Darwish)
Room installation (approx 5x3 meters)
Mixed media (chalk paint, print on lace, canvas fabric, duct tape)
In this work, the Palestinian embroidery collage appears twice - once as a negative image when it is drawn on a black floor in white, marking an absence or a ghost-image and second when it is digitally printed on a lace textile, again as a ghost-image which blends with the lace design. The textile print also includes photos of a spring and a cactus from the grounds of a destroyed Palestinian village not far from the Sea of Galilee. The traditional lace, on which these images were printed, is a quintessential European product but using it here for an architectural object (a tent) alludes to one of the most important elements in Islamic architecture – the Mashrabiya. In the “Murdered house” the porosity of the lace/Mashrabiya is blocked by canvas which is laid behind it. Covering the ghost-images on the floor the tent is akin to the tent that is used to cover findings, especially mosaics, in archaeological digs or the one used by the police in murder scenes.