❝ My experience is meaningless. My struggle is not valid. As a human, I am worthless.

This is the message Palestinians get from the media’s coverage of the genocide taking place in Gaza, which insists on misreporting facts and erasing the context of military occupation and blockade. From governments using our tax dollars to fund the murder of our families while refusing to support an end to the ethnic cleansing of our people. From politicians dehumanizing us through racist tropes and minimizing Palestinian pain and suffering through doublespeak and propaganda. From the institutions celebrating us as tokens to advertise their superficial diversity but refusing to condemn years of violence and apartheid. From employers who celebrate us when we generate profits but threaten our livelihoods if we don’t obey their demands for our complicit “neutrality.” From strangers attacking us for just existing because they are taught to see us as savages. From smiling acquaintances who wish us a good day, then vote for political parties that support Palestinian annihilation. From so-called friends who see all of this and remain silent.

But most of all, my pain, my rage, my anger, my disappointment, my frustration, my anxiety, my sadness, my art, my experience IS actually meaningless when compared to bombs ripping bodies apart, murdered family members, demolished homes, starvation, humiliation, and torture at the hands of the Israeli occupation regime. To prevent this very real violence and pain from also being rendered meaningless then our pain, our rage, our anger, our disappointment, our frustration, our anxiety, our sadness, and our art must transform into action, into liberation of the Palestinian people and an end to the occupation, genocide, and apartheid. Into the liberation of the Palestinian people and all those who are oppressed by settler-colonialism and imperialism.

I WOULD LIKE TO VISIT

An experimental short and installation work that combines text and film to explore the simple desire to travel, through the cultural and political realities of being Palestinian. Soundtracked with the anxiety of disposition, the work opts to show a close up of text being typed and edited on word-processing software, the work complicates a simple desire to travel by adding to it the social, cultural and political realities of being a Palestinian.

Muhammad Nour ElKhairy❞

#MAINARTIST