Jumana Emil Abboud — The Unbearable Halfness of Being

About

CAMPLE LINE is delighted to bring The Unbearable Halfness of Being, an exhibition of drawings, embroidered textiles, talismanic objects, wood carvings, video and neon light works by artist Jumana Emil Abboud, to Dumfriesshire this autumn. The exhibition will open on Sat 7 October and run till Sun 17 December.

The Unbearable Halfness of Being was first presented in 2022 as part of the 15th edition of Documenta, an international exhibition of contemporary art that takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. This is Jumana’s first solo exhibition in Scotland, and the first presentation of this body of work since Documenta 15.

Jumana Emil Abboud (b. 1971, Shefa’amer) is Palestinian and is currently based between Jerusalem and London where she is completing her PhD. Her practice is grounded in the Palestinian cultural landscape and she draws on the traditions of folklore, myth-making and storytelling that once animated community life, particularly around times of family or community gathering, such as seed-sowing, water collection or harvest. She works across drawing, installation, video and performance, often collaboratively, exploring personal and collective memory and practices of sharing and re-telling as ways to address experiences of loss and longing and the impacts of decades of dispossession and annexation.

For more than 10 years, Jumana has focused on oral histories relating to water sources, springs, wells and rivers: ‘For thousands of years, the natural landscape we lived in in Palestine was a terrain of enchantment. The natural water source – spring, well, stream – was such a terrain, inhabited by spirits, good and bad. I like to refer to such waters as spirited sites.’ 

The Unbearable Halfness of Being brings together a compelling body of work that Jumana began to develop in 2020 as part of a residency with Sakiya, a progressive academy working across art, agrarian and ecological practices, based in ‘Ein Qiniya in the West Bank. During her residency, her research focused on seven endangered natural water sources in the Abu al-Adham hillside, and she worked closely with the community to share words, stories, live drawing practices, and participatory actions as part of an extended ‘Water Diviners’ workshop.

Whilst in ‘Ein Qiniya, Jumana worked with inks and wax crayons made with locally sourced materials and made casts of natural objects found at the water sites with community members as part of their workshop. Working between Jerusalem, ‘Ein Qiniya and London over 2020-2022, Jumana used the materials and casts to produce drawings and small sculptures, fused with elements of a number of Palestinian folk tales, including Half-a-Halfling (which lends the ‘halfness’ of the exhibition’s title) and The Orphans’ Cow.

At CAMPLE LINE, Jumana will present 18 drawings in our upstairs and foyer spaces, alongside a selection of beeswax charm objects, carved Sacred water guardians from 2016, embroidered textiles based on drawings by Jumana and made collaboratively in 2021 with ‘Ein Qiniya resident Suha atta Alqam, a small crochet featuring a horse made by Jumana’s mother Clemence, and two neon light works, shaped to form the Arabic letter Ein, meaning eye or water source. Jumana’s films, I feel everything (2022, 9’), The Water Keepers (2022, 30’), and Hide your water from the sun (2014-2017, 8’45”), made in collaboration with photographer Issa Freij, will screen over the period of the exhibition.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a new short essay written by Eline van der Vlist, formerly artistic director, Darat al Funun ­– The Khalid Shoman Foundation.

About the artist

Image: Jumana Emil Abboud, I am my own talisman II (from the Unbearable Halfness of Being), beeswax and turmeric, sizes variable, 2021, commissioned for Documenta Fifteen, courtesy the artist.