Lecture
With Shareef Sarhan and Majdal Nateel

Tuesday, August 6th | 14:00-15:30
Location: via Zoom
Language: Arabic

A few metres away from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Shababek for Contemporary Art brought together dozens of artists for activities, exhibitions, art residencies, social events, and storytelling. This war destroyed that space, turning it into rubble, with the characteristics of the area changed and its spirit extinguished. The Israeli machine of killing and destruction is intent on transforming the urban and natural landscape in the Gaza Strip into grey blocks, or a black hole disappearing all colour and details: a place where death pursues all forms, reverberations, and manifestations of life.

Shareef Sarhan and Majdal Nateel will join us in conversation on the art scene during the ongoing war, and the destruction and loss of lives, spaces, and works of art with which the community is contending. Because history did not begin with the cycle of war, this talk will address the nature of artistic life in Gaza before this genocide by using Shababek’s endeavours as its vantage point.

Shareef Sarhan

Born in Gaza on November 25th, 1976, Sarhan is a Palestinian artist and photographer and one of the founding members of Shababek for Contemporary Art. He is also an active member of the Association of Palestinian Artists. Sarhan holds a diploma in arts from Immaculate Conception School in the United States of America. Sarhan’s art can be categorised within multiple art schools as he utilises a wide variety of techniques, especially in his contemporary compositional artworks. His style is on the spectrum between abstract art and contemporary impressionism.

Sarhan produced several artworks, including: “The Lighthouse of Gaza” (2016), a public space installation sculpture; "Clutter re-Making" (2018), a sculptural installation; and "Soldiers and the Concrete Base" multimedia (2019 - 2021). He has also participated in many exhibitions, including: “Landscape and Mankind” Exhibition (2001), “War Game” Exhibition (2014), and “Gaza Live” Exhibition (2012).

Sarhan won the Bronze Award from the Union of Arab Photographers in Berlin (2010), and the International Oscar Cultural Biennale in Cairo (2009).
 

Majdal Nateel

Nateel grew up in Gaza and received her Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from Al-Aqsa University in 2009. Today, she is a member of the Dahaliz Group, which works on designing and implementing intellectual and critical pathways to visual and audio practices, the first of which was the “Geography of Divine Magic” experience. She has participated in artistic research in many places. The main inspiration for her early artworks was lived experiences; she has tried to translate the reflections of individual cases on society, such as “Memory’s Salt” -2011 and “The Impact of Light and glass”-2013.

After 2014, Nateel’s artistic research process began to focus on searching for the value of humanity undergoing political challenges, especially threats of repeated wars and the ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip. For example, the installation work “If I Was Not There” in 2014 dedicated the artistic tools to talking on behalf of many children who lost their voices and became victims of the bombs. Under the same context, she produced "Without Coffins” which was on the 2014 YAYA shortlist. It is a contract scene of recovering the bodies of the martyrs in Israel’s “cemetery of numbers.” She also produced “The Dream is Possible” for the same competition in 2016; this work materializes the concept of ‘return’ as an individual and collective dream that defines the Palestinian.

Between 2017 - 2019, she started the “Lane” project. In her latest project, “Study of Amputation Spaces,” which she began in 2020, she linked physical and geographic amputation. Nateel’s oeuvre focuses on the impact of colonialism, occupation, and siege/blockade on the physical structure of human beings under these conditions.

Zoom link: Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88051658555?pwd=XH8QfhBQJOZIytAzh9mq7OsREbQjbd.1

Meeting ID: 880 5165 8555
Passcode: 1948