Hanna Farah-Kufer Birim’s works bring together what is found at random with what was intentionally produced. In The Shelter, 1-5, 2007, for instance, Farah was employed to clean out a bomb shelter that was being converted for another use. After clearing out the shelter, while he was cleaning and washing it, he discovered that the word ”Palestine” had been inscribed on one of the walls – probably by one of the Palestinian workers who once slept clandestinely in the space.
In accordance with the task he was commissioned to carry out – that of cleaning out and renovating the shelter – Farah replastered and whitewashed the wall, while documenting this process step by step. In the context of preparing the work for this exhibition, the same work process was reversed, and Farah went back to re-expose the writing on the wall. The exhibition of The Shelter, 1-5 in proximity to Farah and Dina Shoham’s joint work (Block, 2002) further underscores its meaning; it turns our attention once again to issues surrounding the labor force employed in Israeli construction projects, and to the fact that the political cannot be repressed or detached from the public sphere.
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