Titel work: “Majhul Alhuia” 2024
Short film by: Ahmad Mallah
Duration: 2:48 minutes
Sound: Reda El Mouki
Production Support: Rebecca Lillich/Krüger
The film is a registration of a new series of 30 self-portraits Oct 2023- March 2024
Materials: oil paint on Instax Wide Monochrome- polaroids
Size of each polaroid: 8,6 X 10,8 cm
New work for Through The Window Project- Prins Claus Fonds
Project descripting:
“Majhul Alhuia” in Arabic means Unidentified.
Ahmad Mallah uses self-portraits as a way of capturing the horror of the ongoing genocide through the personal response of his body, echoing the trauma of his people through disturbing images, painting pain, numbers and quotes over pictures of his reflected oppression. Since the start of the genocide, Mallah’s Instax self-portraits became a weekly process, utilizing his body through performance image-making to reflect this ongoing grief.
Mallah originally claimed the title of “stateless” as a way to raise awareness of statelessness as an identity and experience, but as the erasure of Palestinian identity has continued, he now insists on the presence of his cultural heritage as legitimate and real. In “Majhul Alhuia” he echoes the erasure of the thousands killed in Palestinian history, dissolving his own identity to parallel the disappearance of the Palestinian people into hyperobjects, masses of unidentified numbers rather than humans deserving of respect.
The multi-media works are coated in red, black and white oil paint with texts in Arabic from the Holy Quran, poems from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and Iraqi poet Muzaffar al Nawab, as well as other quotes that were left by doctors in Al_Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
"And Salam (peace) be upon me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I shall be raised alive!" Surah Maryam, Quran.
