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Rana Nazzal Hamadeh: 1/1000th of a Dunam

Fall 2021
Student Gallery

1/1000th of a Dunam is a multimedia exhibition exploring Palestinian assertions of belonging through the site of soil—an epistemic space where land and belonging are imagined, when in reality they have been denied. Displaced peoples often collect and cherish soils from their lands of origin, and this practice embodies a knowledge explored in this exhibition. All the soil used here, both material and virtual, was collected in Palestine. It symbolizes memory and takes on new meaning as it travels from one occupied land to another and takes new forms. 

1/1000th of a Dunam is a testament to the collaborative nature of belonging to particular lands under settler-colonialism, but this virtual recreation of land is also incomplete, problematic, and demands more. Contradictions are embraced as the viewer is invited to consider notions of land and its multidimensional significance for the colonized everywhere.

— Rana Nazzal Hamadeh

 

Produced in the Documentary Media Program (MFA), Ryerson University, 2020 

Events:  

Artist Talk with Rana Nazzal Hamadeh
Wednesday, October 20
1 pm
Online via Zoom

A grid of square photographs depicting different coloured sands and soils
Fig. 1

Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, Instants (detail), 2020, vinyl. Courtesy of the artist 

A green field extends to mountains in the background.
Fig. 2

Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, 8.49 Million Grains of Soil (detail), 2020, vinyl. Courtesy of the artist

Fig.

Artist Bio

Rana Nazzal Hamadeh

Rana Nazzal Hamadeh is a Palestinian-Canadian artist, activist, and facilitator, immersing herself in community organizing around issues of Indigenous sovereignty, prison abolition, climate justice, and more, both across Turtle Island and in occupied Palestine. She is interested in the complexity of decolonial disruptions and in drawing attention and care back to the Land. In her practice, as in her everyday life, she combines storytelling with critical analysis to draw links between lived experience and systems of power. Rana holds an MFA in Documentary Media from Ryerson University and a BA in Human Rights from Carleton University.