Catalogue

"Catalogue" addresses the period in which motion picture newsreel cinema was popular in the West, and film crews came to the Middle East from Britain to document the subjects of their empire. Appropriating the British Pathé news rushes made between 1935 and 1965, “Catalogue” features this historic footage interwoven with a performance of myself as a live, human water feature that magnifies the objectification of Arab women in Western representations. The second half of the video presents the parallel strategy in the late 1960s by the Palestinian Liberation Organization who publicized Arab women fighters as the symbolic countermeasure in representing the liberation struggles of the Arab revolution.

Catalogue
Medium: Video
Length: 6min 04 sec (no sound)
Year: 2019
Originally commissioned by Artpace, San Antonio, TX