Afterimages
2022
Installation of gouache, pastel, and conté on paper, 35mm Carousel Slide Projector, light filters.
Pictured drawings:
The Eyes are Wide Open
Conté, gouache on paper
26 November, 2021
eye.on.palestine
CAPTION: “🇵🇸#Palestine | The funeral of the child Amjad Abu Sultan (14) whose body was released few days ago after months of holding it by the Israeli occupation forces.”
Photographer unknown
Folds
Red pastel on paper
22 April, 2022
eye.on.palestine
CAPTION: ”For the first time in 20 years, the Palestinian flag was flown over the Dome of the Rock in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem today.”
Photography: Abdalafo Bassam
Nights of Confusion
Blue pastel on paper
20 June, 2021
savebeita
CAPTION “✌️الإرباك الليلي في هذه اللحظات في بيتا " “Night confusion in this moment in Beita”
Photographer unknown
Pillars
Green pastel on paper
15 April, 2022
eye.on.palestine
CAPTION: “🇵🇸#Palestine | The Israeli occupation forces transfer dozens of detainees from Al Aqsa mosque through Al Magharbeh gate.”
Photographer unknown
REDGREENANDBLUE
Red, green, blue pastel on paper
22 April, 2022
eye.on.palestine
CAPTION: “🇵🇸#Palestine | The Israeli occupation forces attack an entertainment activity for Palestinian children in the village of Ras Karkar, west of Ramallah City, today.”
Photographer unknown
This site-specific installation of drawings was created for the Jan Van Eyck Academie's Open Studios, where I presented in the photo studio.
I decided to use the tools available in the studio to enhance the experience of "triggered visions" in my work. Most of these images are fragments or elements of photographs I have been collecting from social media during and since the uprisings in Palestine in 2021. Thinking about the red, green, and blue colored pixels on my phone that physically compose the images I see, I isolate certain formal gestures in each image, enhance it and draw it in one or more of the primary colors of light. A 35mm carousel projector changes the color of the light source every six seconds.
This change in lighting enters the space of the image and further isolates certain elements in it while distorting others. Drawings start to appear doubled, blurred, completely disappear, appear entirely different, and create new images in the process. The line between the space of the image and the space of the viewer is collapsed as the space and the image continue to interact.
Photography by Romy Finke and Lamia Abukhadra