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Shuruq Harb - In the Presence of Absence, 2024 - Spazio Ferdinand Stuflesser, Pontives

Shuruq Harb, In the Presence of Absence, 2024. Video 14’. Courtesy of the Artist. Commissioned by A.M. Qattan Foundation. Photo by Tiberio Sorvillo
Shuruq Harb, In the Presence of Absence, 2024. Videostill. Courtesy of the Artist. Commissioned by A.M. Qattan Foundation.

In her videos and installations, the artist draws inspiration from pop and digital culture, often addressing the ways in which images are collected, archived, circulated, and how they create new narratives. In the video The Jump (2020), a bird-like eye takes the viewer through the tectonic rift of the Jordan Valley, while a robotic voiceover wonders about the disappearance of a young Palestinian man who jumped in the Mediterranean sea. The video explores the psycho-affective terrain of this jump, of taking a leap into the void and the unknown as an extreme act of liberation, a physical thrill and definite end. The two other main protagonists, literary professor Wafa Darwish and psychologist and trauma healer Laila Atshan, reflect on their own experiences of overcoming the limitations of their disability, while also offering insight into the possible meaning and motive behind the man’s suicide.

On view at Pontives, In the Presence of Absence, by referencing and reflecting on Mahmoud Darwish’s eponymous series of long lyrical meditations, Harb revisits the notion of absence, love, longing, Palestine, history, friendship and the relation between life and death through a poetic and sensorial reading of a massive stone on the outskirts of the Ramallah hills. In an exercise in reading the multiple layers and sedimentation that form stones, the video speculates on the political implications of absence, which as Sinan Antoon emphasises in his lecture Before the Ruins: When Mahmoud Darwish met Walter Benjamin, “Far from being negative, absence itself is the trace and evidence of what and who could and should have been there, not as a remnant, but as a continuous and uninterrupted presence.” The work is based on research material gathered during a residency with Sakiya ART/SCIENCE/AGRICULTURE, French Institute in Jerusalem and La Ferme du Buisson in Ein Qinya 2021 and was commissioned by the A.M. Qattan Foundation.

SHURUQ HARB

Shuruq Harb (1980, Ramallah, Palestine) is an artist, filmmaker and writer based in Ramallah. Her artistic practice focuses on online visual culture and traces subversive routes for the circulation of images and goods. Her film The White Elephant received the award for best short film at Cinéma du Réel Festival in Paris in 2018, and was shortlisted for the Hamburg International Short Film Festival in 2019. She is the recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation - Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award. She is currently collaborating with architect and historian Nadi Abusaada on an experimental documentary titled Al-Mashrou (2024).

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Shuruq Harb - In the Presence of Absence, 2024 - Spazio Ferdinand Stuflesser, Pontives

Shuruq Harb, In the Presence of Absence, 2024. Video 14’. Courtesy of the Artist. Commissioned by A.M. Qattan Foundation. Photo by Tiberio Sorvillo
Shuruq Harb, In the Presence of Absence, 2024. Videostill. Courtesy of the Artist. Commissioned by A.M. Qattan Foundation.

In her videos and installations, the artist draws inspiration from pop and digital culture, often addressing the ways in which images are collected, archived, circulated, and how they create new narratives. In the video The Jump (2020), a bird-like eye takes the viewer through the tectonic rift of the Jordan Valley, while a robotic voiceover wonders about the disappearance of a young Palestinian man who jumped in the Mediterranean sea. The video explores the psycho-affective terrain of this jump, of taking a leap into the void and the unknown as an extreme act of liberation, a physical thrill and definite end. The two other main protagonists, literary professor Wafa Darwish and psychologist and trauma healer Laila Atshan, reflect on their own experiences of overcoming the limitations of their disability, while also offering insight into the possible meaning and motive behind the man’s suicide.

On view at Pontives, In the Presence of Absence, by referencing and reflecting on Mahmoud Darwish’s eponymous series of long lyrical meditations, Harb revisits the notion of absence, love, longing, Palestine, history, friendship and the relation between life and death through a poetic and sensorial reading of a massive stone on the outskirts of the Ramallah hills. In an exercise in reading the multiple layers and sedimentation that form stones, the video speculates on the political implications of absence, which as Sinan Antoon emphasises in his lecture Before the Ruins: When Mahmoud Darwish met Walter Benjamin, “Far from being negative, absence itself is the trace and evidence of what and who could and should have been there, not as a remnant, but as a continuous and uninterrupted presence.” The work is based on research material gathered during a residency with Sakiya ART/SCIENCE/AGRICULTURE, French Institute in Jerusalem and La Ferme du Buisson in Ein Qinya 2021 and was commissioned by the A.M. Qattan Foundation.

SHURUQ HARB

Shuruq Harb (1980, Ramallah, Palestine) is an artist, filmmaker and writer based in Ramallah. Her artistic practice focuses on online visual culture and traces subversive routes for the circulation of images and goods. Her film The White Elephant received the award for best short film at Cinéma du Réel Festival in Paris in 2018, and was shortlisted for the Hamburg International Short Film Festival in 2019. She is the recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation - Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award. She is currently collaborating with architect and historian Nadi Abusaada on an experimental documentary titled Al-Mashrou (2024).