Innovative Curatorial Projects – Paris / SingaporeTaysir Batniji
*1966, Gaza, Palestine. Lives and works in Paris, France.
Born in Gaza in 1966, just before the occupation, and a graduate of the Ecole de Beaux-Arts de Marseille, Taysir Batniji has adopted a multidisciplinary approach to his work through painting, assembling of objects, installation, photography, video, and performance art. His artwork offers a distant conceptual observation of the political and historical events that have shaped his country as well as subjectivity in regards to their resulting impact on humanity. Emptiness, absence, disappearance, and uprooting are recurring notions in his work.
Transit / Palestine-France / 2004 / 8'15 / 4:3
The video tackles the issues of borders. The Palestinian artist presents a silent slideshow, made up of photographic images, that he made clandestinely at border passages between Egypt and Gaza. The photographs of people waiting are alternated with black screens, metaphors for emptiness and the passing of time, reflecting the difficult and often impossible conditions of mobility for today's Palestinians. The video addresses notions of travel and displacement as well as the situation of being between two cultures and identities.
Ma mère, David et moi / France-Palestine / 2012 / 15' / 4:3
The narrative thread in Taysir Batniji’s video is a telephone conversation between the artist located in France and his mother located in Gaza. Starting from this intimate, fluctuant, fragmented, difficult and sometimes indistinct exchange, the artist questions the resonance of words like displacement, in-between and exile. Through a triple point of view, Ma mère, David et moi explores how to look at one’s home from elsewhere and how to establish connexions by combining narration, souvenirs, impressions, the personal story and information documents.