Render
2003
(painting) oil on velvet, steel
(West Bank wall) wax, pigment on fragments of Keffiyeh, wood
(wall panels) wood, hardware
18 x 18 x 9 feet
“Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of a secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty.”
-James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
“…you ignored us while we were alive, well here we are, dead; our death didn’t interest you as long as it occurred on our own territory, well, now we throw it at your feet in the fire that consumes you; though we were invisible as we lived, visible suicides is what we will become.”
-Bernard-Henri Lévy, Réflexions sur la Guerre: Le Mal et La Fin de l’Histoire
A condition resides within the enshrouded room. A portrait, framed in armor, appears tearful, facing the exit encrusted with shattered particles that form a map of contested territories. Painted in the Venetian style, the image is “clown compromised” and “terrorized” by “masking,” leaving only sad eyes and a down-turned mouth on the kitsch of black velvet. On the walls, encaustic fragments of wood and shredded kuffiyehs suggest the remains of a suicide bomber.
A space for inadequate descriptions: The evidence of a Palestinian woman suicide bomber and her victims, under a tearful, militaristic male gaze.
