Nira Pereg: ABRAHAM ABRAHAM SARAH SARAH

The Kestner Gesellschaft presents ABRAHAM ABRAHAM SARAH SARAH, 2012, a two channel video installation by Israeli artist Nira Pereg, a part of THE PATRIARCHS TRILOGY which follows the resonant biblical motif of intergenerational birthright as it is reflected in the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

ABRAHAM ABRAHAM SARAH SARAH was filmed in subterranean chambers in Al-Khalil, or Hebron, the largest city of the West Bank. Known to Muslims as Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi (Sanctuary of Abraham) and to Jews as Me’arat Ha-Machpelah (Cave of the Double), they are believed to be the burial place of the biblical prophet Abraham, his wife Sarah, and their descendants. Being one of the most sacred sites in the Abrahamic belief systems and an active place of pilgrimage for both Muslims and Jews, this complex is in the heart of the political turmoil in the West Bank, and it is shared by both religion’s practitioners through a complicated arrangement since 1967, following the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

Pereg exposes the power embedded in administrative structures. She says, “I reflect on what I perceive as political choreography; an absurd duet, re-enacted in the work but also between the work and the viewer, who is forced to participate in order to observe.”

The two-screen presentation plays on the architectural division, which evokes the bureaucratic attempts to impose an impossible symmetry.