Quadrumviratus Exillium
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.”
Preservation Notes
MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION Exillium II is a physical work: a mixed-media abstract collage executed in acrylic and mixed media on canvas, measuring 65 x 54 cm. It is not digital-native. The record's medium is given as "Acrylic and Mixed media on canvas" and the description states that the textured foundation of the piece is built from the artist's own paper ephemera - the first boarding pass marking the beginning of exile, the Israeli military permit to leave Gaza, numerous further boarding passes, tickets and travel documents, including the ticket from his last departure from Gaza. These adhered paper elements carry destinations, names, seat numbers, official stamps, numbers and years. Over and among them the description records acrylic passages: a vast black circular spiral at the centre, white blocks and streaks, and red, rust and earthy tones with black marks. The work is described as the central part of Quadrumviratus, a series of four pieces. No condition claims are made here; the physical object has not been examined and no condition observation is recorded in the archive. CONSERVATION REQUIREMENTS Canvas support with acrylic: acrylic on canvas is comparatively stable. Keep the work in stable relative humidity and stable temperature, avoid direct sunlight, dust with a soft dry brush only, do not use solvents on the paint surface, and support the stretcher from the frame or bars - never by the canvas face or the collage elements - when handling. Collage incorporating paper ephemera: the boarding passes, tickets, travel documents and the military permit are acidic commercial stocks that were never intended to last. They carry a continued deterioration risk - embrittlement, yellowing, ink fading and loss of the printed information that gives the work its documentary meaning. Assessment by a paper conservator is recommended, together with protection from light, moisture and oxygen; where a component can be treated separately from the painted support, encapsulation should be considered. Lifting edges at collage overlaps should be consolidated before the work is handled or framed, since the adhered papers are the passages most likely to detach. Because the printed travel documents are unique personal records, any loss is unrecoverable; photographic documentation of each legible element is advised as part of conservation records. In all cases UV-filtering glazing is recommended. The saturated reds, rusts, yellows and oranges are the passages most at risk of fading, as are the printed dyes and thermal-printed text on the boarding passes. DIGITAL RECORD The original capture was scanned in Sweden as a TIFF master in high, medium and low resolution variants. Those masters are held outside this archive; the file uploaded here is a converted derivative. CURRENT ASSET: PNG, 1378 x 1151 pixels, 4814 KB. Maximum reproduction size at 300 DPI is 4.6 inches on the long edge. WARNING: This file is a low-resolution derivative and is inadequate for print reproduction or detailed study. The high-resolution TIFF master must be sourced and uploaded before this work is sold, printed, or reproduced. This is a particular loss for this work, whose meaning depends on reading fine printed detail - destinations, seat numbers, visa checks, hours, cities and airports - which cannot be resolved at this pixel dimension. Sanity accepts TIFF uploads directly, so no conversion is required: the high-resolution TIFF master should be uploaded as the primary image, with the medium and low resolution variants retained in the gallery field. The gallery field is currently unused and the medium and low resolution variants are not stored anywhere in Sanity.
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