When asked by Diana Nemiroff to explain the title of her exhibition Invisible at the Karsh-Masson Gallery, the artist Rehab Nazzal responded that it is about the invisibility of the struggle of the Palestinian people. It is as simple as that. For 47 years the facts of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and its negative effects have remained invisible in the West, she believes, therefore the artworks in the exhibition, four video projections and a large mosaic of still images, attempt to make that situation visible. Though she often has people tell her that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a complex issue, the artist says it is not: Israel simply has to comply with international law. As an artist, she feels it is her duty to engage with challenging issues and bring them to the attention of people through art in order to discuss and ultimately find ways to resolve conflict and put an end to human suffering.
Rehab Nazzal, Frames from the Negev Prison, 2013, 1700 digital photographs on paper (detail)
However, given this seemingly interminable conflict and the differing factions involved and invested in it, one should not be surprised that the exhibition has generated controversy and heated debate. The guest book alone contains 85 pages and counting of comments representing a diversity of opinion, rants and raves. (This past weekend, the Canadian Coalition Against Terror condemned the exhibition in a full page ad in the Ottawa Citizen.) While the work in the exhibition is formally complex, the artist's point of view and solidarity with the Palestinian struggle is clearly evident. Perhaps it might not have generated such a response if it had been presented elsewhere, but the relocation of the Karsh-Masson Gallery to a space in Ottawa City Hall this January guaranteed that a wide public would see the exhibition. In fact, it was the Israeli ambassador to Canada who initially raised the alarm when he saw the exhibition while at City Hall on other business. Offended, he called, along with the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, to have the exhibition closed. The City refused, while tacking a generic disclaimer at the entrance to the exhibit, distancing itself from the views expressed within.
Nazzal's intentions were addressed at length in an artist's talk on June 1. After the reaction inspired by the exhibition, the talk was moved to St. Brigid's Centre for the Arts to accommodate a larger crowd (the place was packed). Curator Diana Nemiroff, no stranger to controversy, was called in to moderate. In her introduction, Nemiroff cited Hannah Arendt's notion of public space and remarked on the aptness of the exhibition's presentation at City Hall, where the open-ended indeterminacy of democratic space should be given full expression.
In each work in the exhibition, Nazzal employs a formal device that actually obstructs the full expression of the content presented. For example, in the 2012 video Target, cameos of Palestinians killed in the conflict flash by too fast to be easily read, resulting in an ominous if illegible palimpsest of traces. (The identity of some of the individuals included is what has caused the biggest upset.) The 2010 video Bil'in combines the sound of a crowd getting tear gassed with out-of-focus images and abstract flashes of colour, as if the camera too were blinded by tear gas. At the heart of the exhibition are works that utilize found footage of a military exercise at a prison in Israel resulting in the injury and death of Palestinian political prisoners. Frames from the Negev Prison is an installation of 1,700 4"x6" digital prints that runs the length of one gallery wall. The individual prints make up a mosaic that represents a highly pixelated image, with completely black "tiles" indicating footage that was suppressed by the authorities, and others offering only limited views of the events.
Nazzal said her work formalizes the process of making visible that which has been suppressed. The works remain incomplete in order to betray the force of suppression. Above all, the works invite the viewer to look further into what is only being partially presented. Most certainly, Nazzal's exhibition and the works within it have made the dialogic visible, creating the space for a polyvocal response.
Karsh-Masson Gallery: http://ottawa.ca/en/residents/arts-culture-and-community/karsh-masson-gallery
Rehab Nazzal: Invisible continues until June 22.
Michael Davidge is an artist, writer, and independent curator who lives in Ottawa, Ontario. His writing on art and culture has appeared in BlackFlash, Border Crossings and C Magazine, among other publications. He is Akimblog's Ottawa correspondent and can be followed on Twitter @MichaelDavidge.
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Rehab Nazzal at the Karsh-Masson Gallery in Ottawa
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