Border Ecologies and the Gaza Strip exhibition will be on display at Mediamatic in Amsterdam (NL) from 18th of December 2021 until 21st of March 2022.
Border Ecologies and the Gaza Strip traces the transformation of a small farm in Khuza’a; a Palestinian agricultural village in the Gaza Strip situated along one of the territory’s most militarized borders with Israel. In the past few decades, the four-dunam (or 4,000-square-meter) farm, owned and managed by Abd el Haleem and Khaldya Qudaih, has been attacked, damaged, and destroyed time and again by Israeli air raids, shelling, and patrols.
For the exhibition which was first shown at Venice Architecture Biennale, FAST has collected more than a dozen oral histories of daily life on the farm through ongoing conversations with Amir Qudaih and his family. Linking mundane material, such as watermelon, sardines, sand, and sediment, to bureaucratic protocols, Israeli-imposed restrictions, and continued acts of violence, these stories attest to the Khuza’a community’s continual engagement in collective acts of survival, resistance, mutual aid, and solidarity.
The installation is centered on a dining table and a custom-made tablecloth, designed by Malkit Shoshan with Sandra Kassenaar based on stories collected from the Qudaih family and FASTs previous research. It features interwoven stories of daily life on the Qudaih farm. Two projections juxtapose short videos of this farm life with footage of the perpetual violence the villagers face, all of which was captured on mobile phones by Khuza’a’s farmers. The exhibition also includes photographs, short stories and testimonies, and a website that makes the exhibition material accessible online for those who cannot visit in person, in particular the Qudaih family.
Read more: 1) About the exhibition at Mediamatic; 2) About the project; 3) About our exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale, and the award.
