To mark the final stop of the North American tour of Driving in Palestine by Rehab Nazzal, now on view at The People’s Forum in New York City, SAW is pleased to present a screening and talk with the artist on Sunday, October 5 at 7PM at Club SAW. The evening will also include the launch of Soumoud in Dark Times, a limited-edition publication by the artist, published by Monolith Editions (New York City).
Program
Vibrations from Gaza
Rehab Nazzal
16 min., 2023
Vibrations from Gaza offers a glimpse into the experiences of Deaf children in the colonized and confined coastal territory of Gaza, Palestine. Born and raised under Israeli siege and frequent onslaughts, these children — including Amani, Musa, Israa and others — provide vivid accounts of bombardments and the constant presence of drones in their sky. They describe their perceptions of missile strikes through vibrations in the air, trembling of the ground and the resonance of collapsing buildings. The film also examines the impact of sonic weapons on their hearing health, raising a fundamental question of justice and human rights.
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Canada Park
Rehab Nazzal
11:50 min., 2015
Canada Park uncovers the ethnic cleansing of three Palestinian villages in the West Bank — Yalu, Imwas, and Beit Nuba — systematically destroyed during the 1967 Israeli military occupation. Through archival records, survivor testimonies and direct images, the work traces the forced expulsion of 10,000 Palestinians, the expropriation of their land, and the erasure of homes, orchards, cemeteries and places of worship. In the late 1970s, a recreational site named “Canada Park” was built over the ruins, funded by the Jewish National Fund of Canada and reserved for Israeli use. This leisure park conceals the settler-colonial crimes committed against the Indigenous Palestinian people and their land, while exposing Canada’s complicity. To this day, the displaced inhabitants of Yalu, Imwas and Beit Nuba remain refugees, denied the right to return and rebuild their homes.
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Following the screening, Rehab Nazzal will give a talk on her practice, the featured works and the broader context of her work on Palestine.
The films will be presented with English subtitles, and the talk will be in English.
Biography
Rehab Nazzal is a Palestinian-born multidisciplinary artist based in Bethlehem,
Palestine, and Montréal, Canada. Her work deals with the effects of settler-colonial violence on the bodies and minds of colonized peoples, on the land and on other forms of life. Nazzal’s video, photography and sound works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and globally. Nazzal is a professor at Dar Al-Kalima University in Bethlehem and has taught at Simon Fraser University, Western University and the Ottawa School of Art. She is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Social Justice Award from Toronto Metropolitan University, the Edmund and Isobel Ryan Visual Arts Award in Photography from the University of Ottawa, the Best Short Film award at the BFI London Film Festival and the Iris Award for Best Short Documentary at Gala Québec Cinéma.
Image: Amani, a Deaf child, signing "the trembling of the earth during bombardments," from Vibrations from Gaza by Rehab Nazzal
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