I Have Never Experienced Loss in a Way that You Have (exhibition)

2024

4x2m banner, window vinyl

Documentation photos: Guttorm Glomsås and Nayara Leite

Within the first week of my 3-month residency at the Nordic Artists’ Centre Dale, Israel started the most brutal series of attacks against Gaza. Tucked away in a small Norwegian village, resting between mountains and fjords, the contrast between the peaceful surroundings and the horrifying images in the news created a certain kind of restlessness inside me. My plans for the residency changed right away. I couldn’t focus on anything else other than Palestine.

So, I started writing poems about Palestine, about its people, about my own realisation of the horrors, complexities and duration of the current genocide. These poems are the way I found to process my research and to educate myself. They are my response to the atrocities I’ve been seeing every day through my phone and computer screens. They are my way of showing solidarity with the Palestinian people. Fifteen of these poems made it into the publication I Have Never Experienced Loss in a Way that You Have, which also gives the title to this exhibition at Nye Bokboden, Bergen.

For the exhibition, I chose one poem from the publication and printed an excerpt of it on vinyl, which was placed on the windows of the gallery. Inside the gallery, I showed a banner with the final sentence from the same poem, which says We are lending our voices for a future where Palestine is finally free.

To activate the exhibition, I organised three events, the first one being the launch of the publication. I read some of the poems and had a discussion with the audience about the genocide in Gaza. The second event was a protest signs workshop, where the participants made several protest signs pro-Palestine using cardboard and markers. The event was free to attend, and all the material was covered. The signs could then be used at the demonstrations in Bergen. The third and final event, the Nomadic Embassy of Palestine, was made in collaboration with local artists Imad Alwahibi, Peppi Reenkola and Margrethe Smedegaard. For three days, Nye Bokboden was transformed into a Palestinian Embassy, where everyone was invited to join and “become” a Palestinian. We offered bread with hummus, which they could stamp with the sentence “We are all Palestinians”.

I Have Never Experienced Loss in a Way that You Have has been supported by Bergen Kommune.