Soft sculpture
“It makes you an intimate witness and an accessory to a deception that you can do nothing about. Nailing you in your complexity.” - Dave Hickey.
Growing up, the war against Palestine was always on T.V, making me feel hopeless, angry, and vulnerable like a bag of boiling water. My tea bag project was influenced by Muhammad Al Durrah, a 12 year old boy and his father were holding onto each other while hiding behind a cement cylinder, where Israeli soldiers shot gunfire at them, hurting them both, but only killing the boy, where he fell on his father's lap. This video clip of the incident went viral, where Muhammad died as a shaheed (martyr). The tea bag is a metaphor of social conversations in every household I visit, where one way or another, the conversation steers towards politics, whether you add sugar in your tea or not. I am using a camouflage fabric for this project to be close to the tea bag fabric by representing war. It is soaked in blood like material to show the never ending bloodshed that is being dripped on rocks, the basic natural weapon the Palestinians use to protect themselves, and the cement is to represent their home ashes.
Poem on wall:
Justice on earth would make demons weep if
they heard about it
And would make the dead laugh if they saw it
For jail and death are for the wrongdoers if they
are little
While glory, honor and wealth are for the
criminals if they are big
The thief of a flower is blamed and despised
While the thief of a farmland is heralded as bold
and serious
The murderer of the flesh is killed for his deed
While the murderer of the soul is unknown to
mankind
- Khalil Gibra
العدل في الارض یبكي الجن لو سمعوا بھ
ویستضحك الأموات لو نظروا
فالسجن والموت للجانین ان صغروا
والمجد والفخر والاثراء ان كبروا
فسارق الزھر مذموم ومحتقر
وسارق الحقل یدعى الباسل الخطر
وقاتل الجسم مقتول بفعلتھ
وقاتل الروح لا تدري بھ البشر
خلیل جبران