Revolutionary Enclosures (Until the Apricots)
Sharjah Art Biennial 2022
with Jasbir Puar
Jasbir K. Puar and Dima Srouji build upon their respective work in architecture, visual art and decolonial theory to produce a collaborative examination of colonial pathologies. Srouji’s architecture and art practice encompasses a variety of mediums that allow her to explore notions of heritage and public space in Palestine and the region. Puar is a writer and scholar whose current work focuses on settler colonial violence, disability, and debility in Palestine. Their collaborative installations integrate understandings of space and planning with the contemporary politics of resistance in the context of Palestine and the surrounding region.
At Sharjah Biennial 15, Puar and Srouji present Revolutionary Enclosures (When the Apricots) (2023), a series of household items that respond to the material conditions of lockdown, interweaving the artists’ experiences of COVID-19 quarantine in Palestine and their memories of the Second Intifada (2000–2005), a major Palestinian uprising against Israel. The project reframes everyday objects emblematic of the trauma of enclosure for Palestinians as transformative matter and reservoirs of affective practices of resilience, community and caregiving: hoarded cans of tuna form the constituent parts of a radiator signifying warmth; resin apricots evoke the exchange of sustenance among neighbours; shrapnel become decorative wallpaper motifs; a stairwell used as shelter from air raids transforms into a communal reading space. Exploring the collective rhythms and materialities of these conditions, Srouji and Puar conjure the everyday making and remaking of the commons through and against the constraints of siege and containment.
