UNVEILING THE POWER OF THE ‘INVISIBLES’: GAZA REBORN
“WE ARE ALIVE AND PERSISTENT, AND THE DREAM CONTINUES” - Mahmoud Darwish
Inspired by Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari’s work in Gaza, this exhibition aims to reconstruct the reality of a besieged and absurd landscape. They bring to the surface the world of Gaza; the Invisibles with their resilient practices. A world built out of urgency and scarcity that challenges colonial powers and the geography of exclusion by re-appropriating discarded resources.
The gallery has been transformed into an experimental laboratory. The components assembled in this lab build on Yara and Nasser’s ongoing work as Palestine Regeneration Team (PART). They are an accumulation of what has been collected, used, or appropriated in collaboration with families to reconstruct fragments of their neighbourhoods and homes in Gaza and Palestine.
The objects and artefacts on display illustrate an alternative use of materials salvaged from the ruins. Community-driven initiatives include working with rammed earth, recycled crushed concrete from the rubble, reused reconstruction bars, clay-fired and unfired, corrugated metal as well as recycled timber and cardboard.
While the objects on their own may not make sense, in their accumulation they construct a fragment of an alternate reality — a world of impermanence and possibility that is not obsessed with the image at the expense of others. In a time marked by urgency, scarcity, and uncertainty in Gaza, these interventions offer an alternative expression in architecture and aesthetics by accumulating small changes.
In the context of Gaza, the beauty of impermanence stands as a testament to the power of resilience, giving rise to a new facet of the scarred landscape – a new skin that reclaims the right to the city.
