INÊS VALLE

THERE EXISTS A SPECIFIC SENSORY EXPERIENCE – THE AESTHETIC – THAT HOLDS THE PROMISE OF BOTH A NEW WORLD OF ART AND A NEW LIFE FOR INDIVIDUALS AND THE COMMUNITY” Jacques Rancière in The aesthetic revolution and its outcomes

 

“I had two choices: fight or fight, but I have chosen to fight with Art’. These are words that define one’s life purpose, a compromise to a cause, but above all, they wisely unveils us the power that withstands of using new methodologies to contest rights and unveil the bowels of an unfair and perverted power system. These were words that Khaled Jarrar shared with me. The word is big. Thoughts and gestures crisscrossing it at all times and in all directions, like bullets. When nothing arrests our gaze, it carries a very long way. But if meets with nothing, it sees nothing, it sees only what it meets. Space is what arrests our gaze, what our sight stumbles over: the obstacle, bricks, an angle, a vanishing point. Space is when it makes an angle, when it stops, when we have to turn for it to start off again. There’s nothing ectoplasmic about space; it has edges, it doesn’t go off in all directions, it does all that needs to be done railway lines to meet well short of infinity. We find many definitions of what an artist is or what should be the purpose of art, but probably one of my favourite and simple ones, referred by Mark Getlein is that through art we are able to create places for the human determination, allowing us to refresh our vision, helping us to apprehend the world in a new perspective. […]

 

Since early age that Khaled has a personal admiration for painting, thus “Painting with shooting” is somehow a project in which he start to concretize his desire for this medium, through his acquired soldierly knowledge –shooting. The procedures to concretize this project were extremely complex, not only to have access to the materials {bullets} but all the limitation associated with the execution of the project itself. The fact that Khaled was a soldier didn't help him to have an ease access to bullets. Unlike as in the United States of America where we can easily go into any wallmark and buy whatever you want, including semiautomatic assault rifles! Here where the gun is used as a paintbrush, each shoot, each bullet is priceless. Also, the impossibility of shooting on the streets, desert or any public place, forced the artist to build a soundproof room in a secret space, using basically card boxes eggs, mattress, wooden slats and a huge container filled with sand that controlled the bullet to riposte to anyone. Confined to shoot in a square meter space of only 3.7m, increasing the dangerousness of Jarrar’s performance act, therefore in order to not risk anyone else’s life he documented the all process by himself. A project where the artist was obliged to go underground his city to be able to implement it, although these paintings look like an abstract painting, a splash into a white classic canvas, they are enclosing a strong psychosomatic performativity side; a limbo between art and militarism, artist and soldier, violence and action, but above all pushing the boundaries of a psychological understanding that we might have of being and living in an invasive society. These bullets will hit you, but won’t kill you. It will make you stronger and aware. […]

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KHALED JARRAR | ARTIST

Khaled Jarrar is a Palestinian artist that uses art as analytical platform to interrogate the continuous situation in his country, specifically that are inwardly connected with the recognition of the Palestine and the militaristic discourse around it. Using his art practice as a tactic to inquire and reflect about questions of conflict, nationhood, home and belonging where the notion of state authority is a recurring concern, like we can observer in his project Live and Work in Palestine (2011-ongoing) where the artist designed a seemingly official Palestinian passport stamp - “State of Palestine” - which was then offered to tourists arriving in Palestine. This project “State of Palestine” was performed to the art world audience for the first time at Gallery Polaris’ booth at FIAC 2011, representing also Jarrar’s first exhibition of outside Palestine. Last year in London, Jarrar constructed an imposing concrete wall extending across the length, creating an allegory for the process endured by people crossing the apartheid wall in the West Bank, or even revealed resistance to what he considers an act of oppression through his series of cement soccer balls, produced from material cut from the Israeli-built barrier. Adding to these critical topics Jarrar also interrogates how Art can truly be useful tool of deep understanding of our society in such a dubious environment that globalization generates. In addition, Jarrar is an award-winning filmmaker whose recent documentary, “Infiltrators” (2012), won several accolades including at the 9th Dubai International Film Festival (2012), winning the Muhr Arab Documentary Prize, the Special Jury Prize, and the International Critics Prize and it was screened in several cities including: Paris, Milano, Jenin, Barcelona, New York, London, Sarajevo, Prague, Berlin, Geneva, Brussels, Malmo, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Jenin, Chicago or Amman.

 

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