Through a complex documentary aesthetic, Ahlam Shibli has developed a photographic method
that delves into the contradictory implications of the notion of home. Her series of photographs depicts
both the loss and reclaiming of home, particularly in the experience of oppressed communities in different contexts. Defying objectification, Shibli’s photographic works refuse the essentialization of their subjects as victims—which would constitute a second oppression— and rather document them in their contexts, relations, and agency to highlight an ongoing subjectivation. For Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Vergib uns unsere Schuld, Shibli presents the photographic series Staring (2016-17), which searches for the evidence of home in two different places, al Khalil/Hebron and Kassel. In nine episodes, the photographs depict the lives of Palestinian people under occupation, as well as the lives of Heimatvertriebene—expellees from Germany of Eastern European descent—and Gastarbeiter—so-called guest workers from Mediterranean countries who moved to Kassel after the Second World War and who played a key role in the city’s post-war reconstruction. Throughout the series, she combines and compares the photographs of both places to intriguing effect—a youth club founded by Spanish guest workers in Kassel in 1974 and a keeper of pigeons and goats in an abandoned house in al Khalil/Hebron no longer appear as impro- bable contrasts but as contexts in conversation.

Work in the exhibition: Staring, Nine episodes from al-Khalil/Hebron (Palestine) and Kassel (Germany) (2016–17), projection of photographs. Courtesy of the artist