In this project, I position myself against materials found in the London-based archive of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF); the first organisation established specifically for the study of Palestine in 1865. I am using the archive’s collection of objects and images. These were imported, like me, from Palestine to London, in order to re-view my motherland through a foreign timeframe and ideology.
The archive allows me to look at the very first European attempts to transform the notion of the land of Palestine by creating evidential links between the physical landscape and the Bible. This transformation still affects the reality and the politics of the region today.Archaeology was one of the main tools for this transformation, as it created material evidence that could transform the biblical stories into historical facts.
In this installation, I use different conceptual and material approaches to challenge, disrupt and intervene with those past archeological documents in order to rethink our notion of the land and our relationship to it.
The work reflects upon my own identity. It exposes the dual relationship I have with my motherland as both a daughter of colonialists (Zionists), and as a native, as I don’t know any other home.