Exillium II
1984 - Present
Description
This is a mixed-media abstract collage that depicts exile, travel, and borders through a human journey. The tickets, boarding passes, and travel documents belong to the artist himself, tracing a path of exile from Gaza to Europe and beyond. Through this work, the artist conveys and documents “Exillium” as a spiral journey—both physical and mental.
The textured foundation of the piece is built from elements of deep significance, such as the first boarding pass marking the beginning of exile, the Israeli military permit to leave Gaza, and many other boarding passes. Among them is the ticket from the artist’s departure after his only and last visit to Gaza before the genocide, following sixteen years of exile.
This work forms the central part of Quadrumviratus, a series of four pieces that together narrate the artist’s journey across the past twenty years, each reflecting different mental, psychological, and physical states. The collage encodes destinations, names, symbols, official stamps, statelessness, border controls, numbers, and years—symbols of constant displacement, movement, fragmented journeys, and imposed crossings.
The fragmented composition symbolizes an unstructured life and unsettled movement, which is why it is not carefully organized. At its center lies a vast black circular spiral radiating outward, embodying turbulence, forces, and circles of thought—sometimes intensifying like a tornado, at other times receding. White blocks and streaks signify erasure and censorship, but also moments of the unknown. They reflect how, in exile, months or years can pass unnoticed, lost, or suppressed.
The red, rust, and earthy tones alongside black marks represent burning time, urgency, and further fragmentation across shifting lines of memory. This is a restless work—chaotic at first glance, yet profoundly existential, confronting questions of identity, borders, movement, and exile.
Artist Notes
This work is a documentation of half of my last twenty years of life. I did not know I would be creating it, but I kept every boarding pass and ticket with me since I left Gaza and became exiled. That is why these tickets represent the different countries where I have lived, worked, and studied—but always as an exiled person. This work includes the Israeli military permit that allowed me to leave Gaza after unbearable efforts. The collage marks passages, controls, borders, the quiet lines for visa checks, and statelessness. When I finished the collage, I looked at it and thought of it as a negotiation of identity through systems of borders and control. At the same time, I see it as fragmentation and contradiction. It reflects my experience as a Gazan, where movement is never neutral—it can mean both opening and freedom, and at the same time constant loss. This work carries a personal history, where each paper and each inch represent a story and a destination—not only for me, but also for millions of Palestinians. While looking at it, pay attention to the details: destinations, seat numbers, visa checks, my name, the hours, the cities, and the airports. Each one holds a story that reflects the real meaning of “Exillium.”
