Kunstverein Hamburg

BASEL ABBAS & RUANNE ABOU-RAHME
And Yet My Mask Is Powerful
3 February - 29 April 2018

Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme (*1983 in Nicosia, 1983 in Boston, live and work in New York and Ramallah) create haunting worlds in their installations that blend fiction and reality. And yet my mask is powerful is an ongoing project that narrates a counter-model to the omnipresent images of crisis in our contemporary world. The title of the piece is taken from the poem Diving into the Wreck (1972) by the American lyricist Adrienne Rich that gives an account of a lonesome diver seeking the truth of a shipwreck and not what is said about it—the wreck itself and not its story. With the same spirit of discovery, the artist duo traveled several times to places of destruction and ruins of Palestinian villages in Israel to film and collect material. These traumatic locations form the core of a poetic narration envisioning an alternative future using the traces of the past. The leitmotif consists of 3D prints of Neolithic masks from the West Bank, as they can be found today in private and public collections in America, Europe and Israel. The installation at the Kunstverein combines found materials from the destroyed villages with an immersive video and sound piece, rational facts meet emotionally charged impressions.