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Exhibition
Helen de Main
Push Me, Pull Me, 2010
Aluminum and fabric, dimensions variable
Push me, Pull me is a sculptural installation drawing direct formal reference from the shape, colour and texture of canopies and awnings that adorn the shops and cafes of Ramallah. These objects have been scaled down in size, to almost human proportions, losing their functionality as a means of providing shelter, and becoming somewhat absurd presented alone on the terrace of the gallery.
Within the first structure, the two sides of it are seemingly pulling against one another in an attempt to move in opposite directions. Brightly coloured and glossy fabric has been stretched tightly over each side of the metal frame, defining it’s shape and contours, whilst the central section is shrouded by a large tent-like piece of black fabric. The struggle each of the sides is caught in creates a tension in the matt black fabric that binds them together, disallowing either side to escape. A second structure can be seen on the periphery of the terrace, staggering away from the scene.
Maj Hasager
From the Ground to the Sky, 2010
Metal, paint, 3m x 45cm
From the Ground to the Sky has been installed on the highest roof terrace of the Sakakini Cultural Centre, so it can be seen both from the street and the garden. The work resembles a commercial sign, an advertisement, but in this case the slogan is: from the ground to the sky, written in Arabic. It references a well-known saying in a Palestinian context: from the river to the sea – referring to the right to return to historic Palestine, the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the war in 1948 and the fact that people still after 62 years live as refugees in camps across the Middle East. The saying on the sign shifts the coordinates, from East to West, to from down to up, and questions the absurdity of ownership of both the underground and the airspace within the Palestinian territories, due to the occupation, and asks the viewer to consider what lies between the ground and the sky.
Helen de Main
Left Undisturbed, 2010
Plastic, dimensions variable
Left Undisturbed is a sculptural installation of some 15 plastic objects scattered in the grounds of the gallery. The objects themselves are all replicas of a stone selected from a site in the centre of Ramallah where a family home once stood, which was sold and then knocked down for redevelopment into a shopping centre.
Multi copies of the original stone have been recast from the same mould, comodifying and mass producing it; it’s plastic quality referencing commercial goods that are being widely imported in the city, whilst is colour palette is inspired by a specifically Palestinian type of plastic that has been manufactured to produce rudimentary watering cans and vessels since the 50s. These muted tones, and references to outmoded objects, permeate the work with a sense of nostalgia.
Presented outside of the gallery space on the ground, the objects appear as bizarre ruins or discarded rubbish and call into question the role of both commercial development and cultural heritage within the formation of identity of a place.
Maj Hasager
Refugee Routes, 2010
Rubber, 2 x 4m
Refugee routes ’48 is a floor based sculptural installation consisting of 28 black rubber arrows. Each arrow refers to a migration route of the Palestinian refugees during and after the war in 1948. The black rubber arrows are laid out on the floor of the balcony, as silent and fixed evidence of a frozen movement. There is no outline of historic Palestine included in the installation and the “map” of arrows at first sight have no consistency as each one points towards different and random directions. However through the connection to the title, the arrows transform into a coherent map, that signifies the dispossession of Palestinians, which still remains unsolved to this day. Each arrow represents a flow of refugees, and their size depends on the numbers of refugees following the different routes away from a zone of war.
Maj Hasager
Nowhere but Home - Amani, Amer, Ayed and Hussein, 2010
Four photographs 40 cm x 110 cm
A series of triptych photographs portraying young Palestinian refugees of the third generation. Each set of images contains: a black and white image from 2009 of what remains of the village their family fled in 1948, a portrait of the young person and an image of the black and white photograph displayed in their home or work surroundings. Formally, the images reference the filmic frame (16:9), and each image is titled with the name of the person portrayed. The work questions the notion of home in terms of belonging, both in relation to inherited memory of the lost home/land and the current situation of being a third generation refugee, and how the term refugee is interpreted within Palestinian society, depending on the social status and position. The sites have been selected on the basis of young Palestinians’ inherited memories of their families’ villages destroyed in 1948.
Helen de Main
One Month in Ramallah - Al Quds/Guardian, 2010
Diptych photo polymer prints, 80 x 120cm
One month in Ramallah uses imagery taken from the Palestinian and British newspapers Al Quds and the Guardian. For the duration of March 2009 the artist collected each edition of Al Quds whilst on residency in Ramallah, and someone else in the UK collected the Guardian on her behalf. Images were selected from each issue of both papers on an instinctive basis, for their formal qualities as photographs, and a personal interest in the story being presented and printing plates made from each of them.
The 2 large scale images have been assembled using all of the individual plates from each of the papers, giving an overview of news from one month. Presented altogether in this way, direct comparisons can be made to the types of images, content of news and media rhetoric that each of these institutions represent. Despite a broad spectrum of stories being covered, from different cultural perspectives, parallels begin to appear between the images, both formally and conceptually. The international weighting of images depicted in the Guardian, comparative to the more local focus of Al Quds, generates ideas of the effects of media image on the population viewing them, and the role of reporting can play in times of national struggle.
These dense black and white images are off set by minimal monochrome prints made up of geometric shapes. These draw from the graphic qualities of each of the papers, creating a pause in the work and space for contemplation.
Maj Hasager
Memories of Imagined Places, 2010
5 photographs and text,54.5 x 84cm
Memories of Imagined Places is a work of photographic and textual historiography that investigates the construction of contemporary space through architecture, the relation to the past and through collective and inherited memory. The point of departure within the work is Palestinian villages that existed before 1948, and sites have been selected on the basis of young Palestinians’ inherited memories of their families’ villages being destroyed and depopulated. The descriptions of these villages told by young Palestinians (age 17-29), introduce the viewer to different landscapes, layers of loss, memory, nostalgia and politics. 11 villages in the former districts of Jaffa, al-Ramlah, Gaza, Hebron have been selected on this basis, and the artist located the sites with help from researcher and writer Noga Kadman. She travelled to the destroyed villages to produce new images of what remains of these different places. Memories of Imagined Places intends to investigate the reality of what is there now, compared to the collective memory of this particular place and images are presented alongside narrative texts, contained within the same frame. The texts stem directly from conducted interviews with the young people, and they are both accounts of oral history as well as projections of desire. Each of the participants received a smaller version of the image, which they selected of their village. The image is in black and white and has been produced in the darkroom for them to keep.
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