Nablus Soap

Overview

Sharjah Art Foundation Director Jack Persekian and Sound Artist Tarek Atoui will collaborate on a live event that combines a performance by Atoui and a presentation by Persekian inspired by the 1996 work by Mona Hatoum titled Present tense.

In 1996 Jack Persekian invited Artist Mona Hatoum to create a site-specific installation in his Anadiel Gallery in Jerusalem. The result was Present tense (1996), a powerful and provocative work where the artist used bars of the famous Palestinian soap to recreate the devastating division of Palestinian Territory mapped out by the 1993 Oslo Accords.

The ephemeral or perishable nature of the soap alludes most precisely to the unsustainability of the arrangements for control of the West Bank and Gaza, and over the years has forced Persekian to reflect on the failed promise of peace, the separation wall and the reality of a volatile, shifting and disintegrating country.