Past Tense Continuous: the Live Reenactment of the Palestinian Nakba

posted on: Jun 7, 2015

It may look like Photoshop, but look closer: one truck, three families and their possessions, in real black and white. Using water colour paint on the skin, dyed clothes and a painted truck, Ramallah-based artist Dima Hourani recreates memories of the Nakba as she unfolds her interventionist artwork, Past Tense Continuous.   

Using a “total sensory experience to create a simulated image in our memories,” in the words of Hourani, the project was implemented last April in Acre, Israel, commemorating the 67th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba; what Palestinians call the exodus that followed the 1948 Palestine War.

“It is an alternative reality, attempting to appeal to the oral and visual memories, which continue to exist with us until the present day,” the artist says.

Source: www.cairoscene.com