I'm a photographer and digital media artist whose practice examines the politics of image-making in contested geographies, particularly Israel/Palestine. I work across 3D modeling, mapping, drone photography, and archival research to examine photography's entanglements with colonial and territorial politics.
I'm an Assistant Professor of Photography at Parsons School of Design, The New School.
Between 1973 and 2019, the perimeter of Jerusalem grew by 142 km. 3 km a year 257 meters a month 8.56 meters a day 35.6 cm an hour 5.93 mm a minute
The works in the exhibition are a product of a goal I set for myself - to complete a walk around the perimeter of Jerusalem. A course of walk that can be marked on a map, but is not a trail in itself. A walk that is the result of geographic principle, but is devoid of a topographical logic.
The perimeter’s growth doesn’t necessarily indicate a growth in the built-up area of the city. It indicates only that larger parts of the city are in proximity to its borders, that more people are living on the boundary of the city, and that the power and significance of the frontier are growing over the city’s interior. That is where the city is defining itself - in its encounter with the unsettled.
The materialization of the perimeter’s growth takes place in two new video works shown in the exhibition. The work titled ‘270 km’ presents a video simulation of an Eruv string which grows by 85 meters during the 10 days of the show.
While I recognize the importance and impact of direct action against Israeli cultural institutions, I see my role in working to mobilize shame from within. I feel compelled to remain in conversation with that place and those who must reckon with it, even as each opportunity involves its own shame.
In this article, Noam Gal pays tribute to Allan Sekula’s essay “The Body and the Archive” (1986), analyzing the creative practice of two contemporary camera artists, Tomoko Sawada and Shabtai Pinchevsky, and the various social concerns their works evoke.
Can a Self-Driving Car Navigate an Apatheid Road will be screened at the Artport Artist Film Festival in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The First Trail will be exhibited as part of Counter Landscape, curated by Karmit Galili, at Magasin III in Jaffa.