Palestine Project

Claudia  Aravena Abughosh; Marcos Mortensen Steagall

doi:10.24135/link2024.v5i1.238

Claudia Aravena Abughosh Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso of Technology
Marcos Mortensen Steagall (Translator) Auckland University of Technology

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24135/link2024.v5i1.238

Keywords: Cultural Mobility, dislocation, Identity, Re-territorialisation, Transculturation

Abstract

Proyecto Palestina is a body of work that includes the video installations Beitjala and Greetings from Palestina, as well as the video Out of Place. For Aravena, whose father is Chilean and whose mother is Palestinian, the double filiation emerges as the matrix of his work. Beitjala consists of three video projections mounted in the windows of a textile shop located in the busy Patronato, an old Arab-Palestinian neighbourhood in Santiago. The installation in the public space addresses the socio-cultural context of Chile, seeking a creative confrontation with the theme of dislocation, cultural mobility and issues of transculturation. The foundational gesture of the return to the origin: Beitjala and Palestine, makes visible the re-territorialisation of a culture, which has established itself in a place distant from its origins. Greetings from Palestine is based on a dynamic of souvenirs that is brought into a precarious situation and then parodied. An image of a Bethlehem street blocked by a wall is projected onto a wall. The intervened landscape operates as an error and outliner that defines possible and impossible concepts, that enable and avoid. The strategy of the installation involves a confrontation of the gaze of the stranger with this ‘error’. Out of Place promotes an intense exploration of representation and territory, of questions of memory and identity. Aravena's gazes are divided between personal experience and historical and political questions, which broadens the field of meaning of the images, the artist multiplies her points of view using sophisticated language games.

Author Biographies

Claudia Aravena Abughosh, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso of Technology

Visual artist and academic. She is an audiovisual communicator from the Arcos Institute and holds a Master's degree in Cultural Studies from the Arcis University. She has developed a prolific body of work in video and installation, addressing themes linked to uprootedness, otherness and contemporary social imaginaries. He has received numerous awards, among others, his video 11 de septiembre won the Festival Prize at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Germany 2002; she received the Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn grant in 2008 and the Golden Cube Prize at the Kasseler Dokumentarfilm- und Videofest, Germany 2003; Prize at the Locarno Video Arte festival, Switzerland, 1998. Award for Best Experimental Short Film at the Santiago Short Film Festival, 1994.

Marcos Mortensen Steagall, Auckland University of Technology

Marcos Mortensen Steagall is an Associate Professor in the Communication Design department at the Auckland University of Technology - AUT since 2016. He is the Communication Design Postgraduate Strand Leader and Programme Leader for Communication Design and Interaction Design for Year 3. He holds a Master's (2000) and PhD (2006) in Communication & Semiotics acquired from The Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and a PhD in Art & Design from Auckland University of Technology in 2019. Research interest focus on Practice-oriented research in Design through a Global South perspective.