Irrational

"Usually, I call these words a statement, but actually I do not sit and write. I write while I'm taking photos. Usually, my statements reflect my feelings towards my work, but for these photos no words could be written. I could not find my words because I could not find the images from my childhood of the pure hills of the West Bank. They were no longer there. The landscape of Palestine that I grew up with is gone. There are no longer growing ancient villages melting into the mountains, there are no shepherds wandering freely, no olive trees hugging the beautiful hills. All I can see now are newly developed, ugly constructions. They are called "Israeli settlements". They grow like monsters slowly killing every hope of whatever current peace process is being discussed on the news and not on the ground. In these photographs I am speaking to my land, to my Palestine and I am saying sorry but these irrational monsters will be gone one day."

Rula Halawani, 2003

As a native of occupied East Jerusalem, Rula Halawani began her artistic career by registering the difficulties of living under a protracted political conflict. Halawani’s early works capture the many aspects of this reality, from the tedious moments of attempting to perform daily tasks under the restrictions of military occupation to the cyclical onset of violent siege that transforms Palestinian neighbourhoods, towns, and cities into overnight war zones.

After several years of photographing the stark imagery that defines the everyday lives of Palestinians, Halawani increasingly focused on the spatial implications of the occupation by documenting its built environments and structures: the meticulous system of architecture that serves as one of its central mechanisms. Recently, she has turned her lens towards the traces of lives and history that can still be found in often overlooked details, whether in the material culture of Palestinian society or the transformed landscapes of her childhood.

Born in 1964, Rula Halawani holds a Bachelor of Art degree in Advanced Photography from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada (1989); and a Master of Art degree in Photographic Studies from the University of Westminster, London (2001). Halawani is based in Jerusalem.