Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s latest exhibition stands as a testament to the ability of art and culture to provide respite and escape during unspeakable times.
Discussions regarding the relationship of art to politics can now quickly become either blasé or burdensome. On one side of the political divide there is the “keep politics out of art” slogan – usually shouted by people who want their politics present, just not somebody else’s – while on the other extreme it can sometimes feel hard to even make or discuss anything simply formally beautiful or creative because it now has to evidence itself with footnotes of meaning, intent and political force.
The truth is that most artists comfortably mediate that space between polar extremes and make work that provokes, observes or empowers, whatever level of politics they see fit to play with. This does not mean, however, that discussions in politics or mainstream media (and its comment sections) do not immediately revert to type and force the art into whatever shape they see fit to suit an agenda or perceived slight. This is no more evident than when the politics present in work is of ongoing violent conflict.
The genocide in Gaza is so overwhelming and disturbing that not only might it be considered too hard to make something as aesthetic and experiential as art about, but an artist may also wonder what the point is, questioning the very point of an exhibition in the face of such events. If art sits to the side of politics, whether as jester or chorus, what is its value and purpose when presented next to rolling news footage of the devastation in Palestine?
Artist duo Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme deal with such questions not only with an artistic concern but also an existential one, both coming from Palestine. Their current installation at Nottingham Contemporary, Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom, was long in the planning but made with urgency as well as difficulty. When stepping into her role as director of the gallery early in 2023, Salma Tuqan already knew she wanted to work with Abbas and Abou-Rahme, but none of the trio knew what form it would take. Now, two years on, the violence in Palestine has created the purpose and form of the work.
Split between two rooms, the mix of video, sculpture, sound and texts acts to slow down the urgency and immensity of what is happening in the news, distilling it into a moment of clarity and questioning around the role of culture not to stop or fight political violence, but to offer personal, often intimate, respite or hope. In the opening space, a series of monolithic, flat metal sculptures are scattered around the room. They are at once obstructions, but also containers of visuals and words, porous barriers.
On the side facing every visitor upon entry are drawings, photographs and other assorted creative fragments. Upon walking around the works, visitors may notice that on the rear there are poems and emailed texts, responding or adding context to the images on the other face. “These are my baba’s drawings,” starts an email sent by Tawfik Abou-Rahme last February to his daughter in a message that spoke of his father’s passing. Since then, Ruanne Abou-Rahme has also lost her father. Other texts are anonymous. “… They confiscated pens and papers, so that we don’t produce, we don’t write, and don’t have any production as a prisoner movement,” reads one.
The adjoining room presents a three-screen film, fractured across a series of metal barriers matching those next door. This is a long film and not always easy to watch, although delicately composed and scored. Filmed across the occupied territories, it is a series of montaged testimonies from former political prisoners discussing their experiences, and especially focusing upon their relationship to culture and how it aided both memory when inside, and their sense of recollection and identity once they had left prison.
One recalls: “The song Ghassan taught us to love the cause. I had forgotten it, and I remembered it when I was in prison. We would sing it together between the cells.” Another: “they wanted to silence me so that not only will I be physically imprisoned but they will also imprison my mind, imprison my feelings and my senses. I refused.” Another speaks about how, now free, they draw the faces of interrogators and guards from their captive memory.
Faced with the impossibility of an exhibition in a contemporary art space in Nottingham even contending with, let along making any meaningful impact upon the unfolding genocide, Abbas & Abou-Rahme have instead put the violence as an invisible backdrop to their treatise on the transformative potential of culture – although never not-present, even if not centred and only tangentially presented visually.
While beautiful and measured, due to the inherent stories discussed, it is not an easy watch. Visitors may decide not to engage cinema-style for the full hour duration, but instead meander to and fro between the spaces. If they do so, they may notice recurring motifs between them. In the film, soil is crumbled within the hand, someone talks of tunnelling under a prison wall to escape, and the familiar concrete barriers of the occupied territories are filmed from a moving car. In the sculpture room, Tawfik’s email continues to speak on his father’s restoration of their family’s 300-year-old home in Shefamer, where who worked for ten years trying to remove concrete poured over traditional architecture and stone, “chipping away in one small way the violence of colonisation”.
This speaks to small acts of resistance. When faced with existential violence, all one might be able to do is similar small acts, whether that be digging away at concrete, writing a poem or creating an exhibition to allow voices to be heard. In itself, evidently it will not stop genocide or aggression, but altogether it may create a force of collaborative solidarity, empathy or even – and which is totally fine – a personal, intimate moment of respite.
Abbas & Abou-Rahme are presenting how culture has the capacity, at this small scale, to help cope, share or escape. “I think of writing as an operation of breaking out of these walls”, says one of the characters in the film, and we are reminded throughout Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom that such walls to be tunnelled under or broken down are not only physical but also psychological and in memory, with the exhibition itself seemingly part of an ongoing act of breaking out for the artists themselves, and for their family and friends who continue to chip away.
Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom runs until 11 January
