Atallah Abir

4th exhibition in the 17th Nidbah series

Abir Is an Israeli-Druze woman who moves between the traditional culture from which she comes and the enabling, limitless world of artistic creation.
Abir watches her daughters very closely through the camera, as if there is not enough physical space or will to step back. Within the narrow space in which she creates, she directs her daughters and plays with them as dolls, while allowing them to realize their “potential space”: they role-play, exchange identities and experience different and opposed characters. Thus, the girls are both dead and alive, victims and victimizers, modest and promiscuous, covering and revealing, delicate and fragile as brides in white, or aggressive in a kaffiyah and body make up as men ready to battle or court.
In the “potential space” created between the external reality and the internal world during play, lays the possibility to fulfill wishes such as force and control, freedom and the discovery of self identity, without boundaries of time, space or cultural context.
Some of Abir’s works cite western art, from the Christian Pietà to the direct stare of Virginia, The American photographer Sally Mann’s daughter. The death mask refers to the American horror movie “Scream” (1996) which signifies shallow western culture, while implying to “Scream” by Monk, one of western culture’s classical works of art.
Abir screams in her works the shout of women asking to make their voices heard, asking for their daughters freedom from chains and oppression, and the possibility of a better future, where they will live as autonomous women. Through the work of photography, the artist enables her daughters to experience authenticity and free choice.