The most comprehensive exhibition to date of work by Palestinian artist Ahlam Shibli. A selection from three series of photographs by her, it depicts ordinary life in extraordinary circumstances, hemmed in by occupation and the state of Israel.
One series here, Unrecognized, epitomises the artist's fundamental proposition and is remarkable for openness and lack of bitterness. Through its subject, Arab Al Na'im, a village in the Galilee region which does not exist on official maps, we apprehend what the artist describes as 'an incongruity between two sets of markings. The first tries to eternalise and accentuate what is absent, and the other tries to conceal and obliterate what exists. Each of these two sets of markings undermines the other, questioning the 'Israeli' illusion that is it possible to obliterate the real and human (Palestinian) villages and their existence has on reality.'