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Mnemosyne
by Inas Halabi
2016, 10′
Presented at VISIO. Moving Images After Post-Internet (2019)
Courtesy of the artist. The work is commissioned for the Young Artist of the Year Award, AM Qattan Foundation
The title of the work refers to the Greek goddess of memory and the ‘inventress of language and words’. The starting point for the project is a scar on the forehead of the artist’s grandfather caused by a bullet shot by an Israeli soldier in the late 1940’s. Focusing on the sagas of myth and the construction of memory, members of her family are filmed individually as they narrate their version of the same event. The project considers how one can play the role of a historian when the primary source is no longer there. ‘We do not remember. We rewrite memory much as history is rewritten.’ (Chris Marker, Sans Soleil). As such, recollection becomes an act of transformation rather than reproduction.
Inas Halabi works primarily with film and archival material to examine historical and political narratives of national identity, collective memory, and myth-making. Her practice merges observations with site specific research and is concerned with how social and political forms of power are manifested. She holds an MFA from Goldsmiths College in London and recently completed a two year residency at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. In 2016, she was awarded first prize for the A.M. Qattan Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year. She has recently shown and projected her works at: Silent Green Betonhalle, Berlin; Smith College Museum of Art, USA; al-Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem; OFF-Biennale Budapest, and the 13th Sharjah Biennial’s offsite project, Shifting Ground.