Keep Your Eye On The Wall

About

How many ways are there of looking at a wall? In a striking new book featuring specially commissioned images, six renowned Palestinian and one German artist-photographers interpret the ‘Separation Barrier' that Israel continues to erect in the West Bank with impunity, despite its violation of international law. The results, with accompanying texts by noted writers (and a foreword by distinguished author and human rights activist Raja Shehadeh), are by turns surprising, poignant, disturbing and humorous. Keep Your Eye on the Wall: Palestinian Landscapes was published last month by Saqi. The photographers whose work appears in the book are: Taysir Batniji, Raed Bawayah, Rula Halawani, Noel Jabbour , Raeda Saadeh, Steve Sabella and Kai Wiedenhoefer. Join us for a thought-provoking discussion between the book's editors Olivia Snaije and Mitchell Albert and two of the books contributors Malu Halasa, a London-based cultural critic whose essay on the movement against aestheticising the Wall is featured in the book, and Berlin-based Steve Sabella, whose powerful images convey the fragmented state of the psyche in exile. A selection of images from Keep Your Eye on the Wall will be screened as well. Olivia Snaije is a journalist and editor based in Paris and books editor for Harper's Bazaar Art. She was formerly Executive Editor at Alef, a London-based magazine covering Middle Eastern culture. Mitchell Albert is the Publisher and Commissioning Editor of Garnet / Ithaca Press. Formerly, he has been Programme Director of the UK literary development agency Writers' Centre Norwich, Editorial Director of PEN International and Commissioning Editor of Saqi Books. Malu Halasa is a writer, editor and curator based in London. Her books and exhibitions on Middle Eastern visual culture provide a complex view of the region. Her works include the acclaimed Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie: Intimacy and Design. Steve Sabella will have a solo exhibition at the Berloni Gallery in London in March 2014, and monograph on his work will be published in September 2014 by Hatje Cantz / Akademie der Kunste. He is currently working on an autobiography, The Artist's Curse, which takes as its subject the colonisation of the imagination. FREE, rsvp@mosaicrooms.org