TAYSIR BATNIJI
Disruptions. 2024
An artist book, mesmerizing and painfully contemporary
In this book, Batniji collects fragmented screenshots taken between 24 April 2015 and 23 June 2017 during several WhatsApp video conversations with his mother and family in Gaza. Settled in Europe and unable to return to his homeland, this digital commons provided a crucial meeting ground for Batniji and his family.
Batniji’s blurred and pixelated images politically visualize how communication and daily life in Gaza are compromised by conflict, control and surveillance. In their noise and visual obliqueness, Batniji creates a thread between common intimacy and the colonial, now genocidal violence imposed upon Gaza to date, while evoking the physical and emotional separation of loved ones that occurs across borders.
TAYSIR BATNIJI (b.1966 in Gaza, Palestine) was trained at An-Najah National University, Nablus, prior to continuing his studies in France. His work incorporates photography, video, drawing, installation and performance. It has been shown widely in Europe and the Middle East, e.g. at the Venice Biennale; Jeu de Paume, Paris; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; Kunsthalle Wien, Witte de With, Rotterdam; Rencontres d’Arles; MAC VAL, Paris; and his most recent solo exhibition at the Mathaf in Doha. Previous publications by Batniji include Home Away From Home (2018), and Quelques bribes arrachées au vide qui se creuse (MAC VAL, 2022).
Taysir Batniji
Disruptions
128 pages, 155 × 216 mm, 60 colour plates
Image from inside the book.
Courtesy @taysir_batniji @jointsloose
With an essay in French, Arabic and English by Taous R. Dahmani
Designed & Published by Loose Joints
ISBN 978-1-912719-5
Taysir Batniji Disruptions is accompanied by works of Walid Raad, Chaza Charafeddine, Benyamin Reich, Ali Kaaf, Maryam Motallebzadeh, Željka Mićanović Miljković, Ekin Su Koç, Emin Turan, Elisabeth Masé, Patricia Lambertus, Furkan Akhan, Razan Nassreddine, Alexander Polzin, Chris Newman, Raziye Kubat, Mohamad Al Roumi, Maliheh Afnan, Katharina Karrenberg, Joseph Sassoon Semah, Elza Javakhishvili, Eva Beierheimer & Miriam Laussegger, Antonia Baehr, Ana Sontag.
MKM Gallery is an art cabinet, a performative installation, a private museum, Denkraum, and exchange market. MKM Gallery shows changing work constellation of a loosely associated artist collective working with House of Taswir.
MKM Gallery is a project of House of Taswir.
For more information please contact Adam Bruckstein at [email protected]
