Jericho First

Overview

Jericho First places at its centre imagery from the mosaic of the bathhouse in the Hisham Palace (Khirbat al Mafyar) in Jericho of deer and a lion in a violent hunting scene. Sharif Waked, a Nazareth born Palestinian artist, forms a connection between the name of the first stage of the Oslo agreement, 'Jericho First' and the violent hunting scene.

In the series of paintings, the lion clinging to his prey and the deer become a silhouette together, while changing from images to icons. An unexpected process takes place in which the images change- minimising and expanding, according to a mathematical function. The serial changing creates tension between the seemingly objective mathematical regularity and the partial lack of control over the final result. In the first series, the image is minimised until it becomes an insect image. In the second series, the image expands almost to the point of explosion. In both series, a growing gap is created between the original image and its mythical meaning and the sequence of images that echo the original but draw away from it to the point of extinction.