LABA Berlin | Mar’a’yeh: A Night’s Journey | Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany
Siamese Twins
Poem, research vitrine
Siamese Twins is a poem and zine inspired by the Franz Kafka’s short story, The Great Wall of China. Jointly, the two artists question the socio-political use of boundary walls. The zine is printed in three editions, each representing a wall in the Middle East.
Self Portrait with Kafka
Sudoku sheets, thread, artist frame
Self Portrait with Kafka is the third part of the collaboration of Ali Gharib and Shir Shoval-Simhoni following the zine and poem Siamese Twins which explores the political history of existing and fallen walls.
The work is inspired by Kafka’s short story The Great Wall of China—in particular his assessment that the piecemeal construction of the Great Wall was used to distract the builders from the larger power structures they reinforce. The work is backed with a similar portrait of Kafka. Zooming in and out, the audience is invited into Shoval-Simhoni’s own struggle to make sense of her identity in relation to the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Much like the workers in Kafka’s story, viewers are invited to focus on small fragments, assembling meaning from parts, but ultimately confronting the impossibility of seeing the full picture and finding themselves overwhelmed by the larger, incomprehensible forces at play.