(DIS)CLOSURE

The West Bank is a disorienting contradiction. This is a place out of time and a time out of place. You are neither here nor there: locations are undefined, your maps are useless here, and the place right in front of you is not in front of you, you are foolish for even thinking it could be so—learn once and for all that the more straightforward things seem, the more tortuous they are. It seems inconceivable that this could possibly last a second longer, yet everything in you irresistibly screams that it cannot be any other way. Indeed, something so tangled and arbitrary and constantly exasperating should be intolerable—but instead it is mind-numbing. This garish carnival assaults your senses and conscience, grinding then into dust, and leaving you adrift on its wanton tides. In the face of this gnashing leveler, to somehow continue even existing is a stubborn affront. But when pressured on all sides at all times, you are never more aware of your own presence; and any movement, however tepid, cannot help but push back against something. After a more documentary approach in my earlier photographic work, and in my more recent abstract collages and paintings, I found an interface between these two visions through the human experience in this project.