At great personal and physical risk, between 2010 and 2020, artist and scholar Rehab Nazzal traveled throughout Palestine to create a body of work in photography and video so expansive that it may be one of the most consequential artistic productions of our time.
Nazzal employs a deliberate documentary approach to urgently record what many have been prevented from seeing and hearing: the images and sounds of Palestine under military occupation.
During the production of this work, Nazzal was shot in the leg by a sniper while photographing the Israeli Defense Forces in operation in Bethlehem, deploying their infamous “Skunk” truck that sprays a chemical compound made to smell like sewage and rotting corpses. Despite being an apparent target, she persisted with her project for another five years to document as much of the Palestinian land as she could. Tens of thousands of photographs, videos, and audio clips were captured, constituting not only an important oeuvre but also an invaluable archive.
The exhibition “Driving in Palestine” is a catalyst for political change, giving agency and legitimacy to the Palestinian cause, which is so often misconstrued or ignored by the mainstream media, which often succumbs to the excessive and unrelenting campaigns of the Zionist lobby, erasing any critical or truthful representation of the occupation.
Presented by The People’s Forum and SAW.
