Sediments, 2022
Collaborative installation | ‘Scattered Shared Spaces’ exhibition (2022) curated by Yael Messer | Beit HaGefen Art Gallery
A random wandering in the Carmel between the University of Haifa and Damon Prison led these three artists to an abandoned reservoir, several ruined stone buildings and wild nature reclaiming its place. A chance meeting with a person there transformed the abandoned space into a place with a name, ownership and history.
The reservoir turned out to be a human-made rainwater reservoir built to provide regular irrigation for the tobacco fields of the Karaman family who owned the entire area, now known as Hirbet Damon. Around 1932 a tobacco farm was established there under the title Mazra’at Damon. The tobacco grown on the farm was used by a cigarette factory in Haifa which was owned by three families – Karaman, Dick and Salti. The farm, tobacco fields, reservoir and cigarette factory existed until 1948.
The installation; consists of three parts: a wall of remnants from the reservoir site; a mound made from the findings of the archival research and findings from the and a tobacco field that will grow during the exhibition months. All three parts reveal the multiple layers of the place and invite viewers to reconstruct its story by returning to the site’s lost, invisible narratives. This offers a new point of view, which includes a layered multitude whose various strata exist together simultaneously.
Arafat, Tsadka and Schein bring their different practices to the installation and together form a new whole: the archival research, the creation of sound and image and the language of the work are organised in the gallery space in a non-hierarchical manner to reveal the geological, historical, cultural and political layers of Hirbet Damon and the power relations between the landowners and the governmental authorities. The work offers an alternative research process based on a non-linear, and not necessarily human, reconstruction and recollection; a recollection in which the past is still present thus allowing the viewer to imagine a different type of existence.
As part of the exhibition ‘Scattered Shared Spaces’ (2022) curated by Yael Messer
Beit HaGefen Art Gallery - Haifa in collaboration with NPO Sikkuy-Aufoq