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Lot Essay
The young architect and artist Saba Innab is a Palestinian/Jordanian artist who is concerned with urbanism and processes of space production and re-production. She tackles the very sensitive and delicate subject of the 'Land' in a very isolated, structural, geometrical and contemplative manner.
On her numerous journeys from Amman, to Nahr Al- Bared camp, it was a journey from city to capital to a Palestinian refugee camp in the northern part of Lebanon. This camp, which took its name from the river that bears the same name 'Nahr' in Arabic meaning 'River' and 'Bared 'meaning cold, was founded back in 1949 by the Red Cross societies to help the refugees suffering from the difficult cold winter conditions in the Beqaa Valley.
At present, it is said that some thirty thousand displaced Palestinians and their descendants live in an around the camp. Under one of the many Arab political agreements of the 1960s, the Lebanese army is not allowed to enter the Palestinian camps and an alternative internal security is provided by Palestinian troops.
This present lot comes from a series called 'No- Sheep's Land' where the artist questions the meaning of land, as she encounters the numerous check-points that are stretched along the extended 'No Man's Land', with an amusing appearance of scattered sheep in the horizon which are free and mobile animals.
It reminded her constantly about the bulldozed land of 'Nahr Al Bared', a land without sheep, an extended nothingness and a surreal coast.
The temporary permanents, the vertical horizons, she lived through this paradoxical comparisons as she crossed the borders on these endless journeys. Visual scenes were taking shape in an inner monologue that was fed by the daily rituals of crossing, transition, building and rebuilding, gradually transforming into a utopia of possibilities superimposed on real yet imagined land. Finally, reaching the ultimate dilemma - 'how can one build without a land?'
On her numerous journeys from Amman, to Nahr Al- Bared camp, it was a journey from city to capital to a Palestinian refugee camp in the northern part of Lebanon. This camp, which took its name from the river that bears the same name 'Nahr' in Arabic meaning 'River' and 'Bared 'meaning cold, was founded back in 1949 by the Red Cross societies to help the refugees suffering from the difficult cold winter conditions in the Beqaa Valley.
At present, it is said that some thirty thousand displaced Palestinians and their descendants live in an around the camp. Under one of the many Arab political agreements of the 1960s, the Lebanese army is not allowed to enter the Palestinian camps and an alternative internal security is provided by Palestinian troops.
This present lot comes from a series called 'No- Sheep's Land' where the artist questions the meaning of land, as she encounters the numerous check-points that are stretched along the extended 'No Man's Land', with an amusing appearance of scattered sheep in the horizon which are free and mobile animals.
It reminded her constantly about the bulldozed land of 'Nahr Al Bared', a land without sheep, an extended nothingness and a surreal coast.
The temporary permanents, the vertical horizons, she lived through this paradoxical comparisons as she crossed the borders on these endless journeys. Visual scenes were taking shape in an inner monologue that was fed by the daily rituals of crossing, transition, building and rebuilding, gradually transforming into a utopia of possibilities superimposed on real yet imagined land. Finally, reaching the ultimate dilemma - 'how can one build without a land?'