Artworks in the introduction

3Fibreglass installation and a large wall print. Dependence powerfully captures the intricate dynamics of control and dependency that define life under Israeli occupation. Inspired by Steve Sabella's personal experience detailed in his memoir The Parachute Paradox, the artwork emerges from a pivotal moment of tandem parachute jumping with an Israeli instructor over Haifa. Sabella vividly recounts this experience, drawing a stark parallel to his broader existential reality: "[Life] under occupation is like the reality of a Pales- tinian attached to an Israeli in a tandem jump. There is an Israeli on the back of every Palestinian, controlling all aspects of life—the Israeli is always in control." Through this metaphor, Sabella portrays the constant, looming threat Palestinians face, trapped in what he describes as a "never-ending hostage situation." This installation not only reflects a physical entanglement but also provokes a deep contemplation on freedom, identity, surveillance and control under Israeli occupation. Steve Sabella| The Parachute Paradox

Artworks in section one

4Feature black and white photochromes from nineteenth-century historic Palestine, with a selection of images from Syria and Lebanon. Sabella collaged them, recreating the feeling of the place as if one had travelled through a time machine and was suddenly present. In search of hidden realities, Sabella wrote about how the archaeology of the future is the archaeology of the image and its genealogy. Elsewhere investigates time, the layers of history, archaeology, genealogy, geography, and anthropology, and one cannot even look at without a dose of mythology. “Elsewhere is the Renaissance of culture and life constantly under erasure. Yet, the spirit of the place and its people will always be alive. Elsewhere is a journey to the land that once was, the land, the place that lives in the imagination.” Ader auction catalogue | Paris.

Artworks in section two

5“In Steve Sabella’s work No Man’s Land, it is precisely the recurring elements of any landscape that are questioned as we do not know where we are — the specificity of place has been lost as the photographs are a sophisticated, seamless collage of everyday elements from the landscape, rotten leaves, feathers, pollen and dust on the surface of a lake. As Steve Sabella explains, ‘We don’t know where we belong here. If they reflect anything, these are images of a present defined by shifting borders and displaced origins, existence in them threshold.’ We seem to float in an abyss, an infinity with no rootedness or grounding, in which fragments from the landscape create a cosmos. The title, No Man’s Land, has particular associations for Palestinians as it was the strip of land that divided East and West Jerusalem after 1948, beyond which lay the other half of the city from which they were expelled from and their homes taken.” Intimate Terrains: Representations of a Disappearing Landscape Catalogue | The Palestinian Museum | Tina Sherwell.

Artworks in section three

6Feature black and white film negatives (generated from digital images) printed with black and white photo emulsion spread on colour paint fragments collected from Jerusalem’s Old City house walls. The base effectively coloured the images, rendering some of them as archaeological findings. “In 2009 Sabella rented a house in Ein Karim in Jerusalem, which a Palestinian family had abandoned, to secure themselves, when they heard about the Deir Yassin massacre in April 1948. He stayed in it for thirty-eight days, taking photographs of objects—utensils, walls, pictures—visually frisking the history of the place. Then, in his parental home and in other houses in the Old City of Jerusalem, he removed pieces of walls, little bits of painted plaster, or just of stained chalk. The colour photographs were copied onto black and white film, and the pieces of fresco, flayed bits of wall, were covered in an emulsion, and the negatives from the house he lived in projected and fixed on that emulsion. Because of the different colours of the carrier, the black and white images take on a mysterious, dreamlike presence that really belongs to no place and no time. They look ghostly; are the absence of presence and the presence of absence, and it is hard to decide which place or time they belong to.” Steve Sabella: Photography 1997 – 2004 | Hatje Cantz | Hubertus von Amelunxen.

Artworks in section four

7A collage of Palestinian embroidery photographed from traditional costumes. Everland celebrates all the charm that comes out of Palestine, where everything gets disrupted. Yet, the photo collage style enables the different cross stitches, among other techniques, to penetrate deep into new borders, creating unique designs that look as if they represent every other culture.

Artworks in section four

8Photographed in a hospice of elderly people in their last days of life, their hands transform into statues as if sculpted, and their skin mirrored for Sabella back then the harsh reality of living in what he perceived as a permanent state of exile. “Exit was in many ways his attempt to give a visual form to the cumulative experiences of his life, and the result, which makes one cringe, is haunting. These hands were the landscape of his exile. But it was, however, the lowest ebb that was his turn of tide, for from the choice of Exit, perhaps from life, Sabella chose to rebuild his own utopia in the exile of his mind. Contempo- rary Practices Journal | The Journey of Artistic Interrogation and Introspection | Yasmin El Rashidi.

Artworks on the cover and in section five

9The Great March of Return is a collage including over one thousand photographs captured by five Palestinian journalists from Gaza of the crowds who have gathered every Friday since March 2018 to end the Israeli occupation. These images are contrasted with photos of outer space merging the hermetically sealed Strip with infinity, creating a monumental “present-day fresco” demonstrating a nation’s eternal fight for liberation. “Between fires, smoke bombs, death, and destruction, the great circle connects to Renaissance art, creating a ‘space without borders’ that makes one think of a sort of a Palestinian Sistine Chapel, containing a message of rebirth. Sabella uses colours in photographic images how the painter uses his brushes and palette. The assembled photos create a new world, ‘a reality within reality’, a journey to the beginning and end of time.” BLOCKS | Museo Riso | Albergo Delle Povere | Palermo | Daniela Brignone.

Artworks in the Post Script

10Managing to convince six Israelis who served in the Israeli army to strip to their underwear and standing opposite to them, also in underwear, Sabella creates a thought-provoking historic installation on identity and identification, self and other, on image and imagination. The viewer standing in the middle of the installation cannot see both sides at the same time. “Thus, the viewer must make a critical choice or step back to consider their position. The installation urges us to reflect on the many essential aspects that have shaped the conflict: the Holocaust, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the stripping of Palestinians in search of suicide bombers, demography, settlement, borders, the Wall with restrictions of either side in crossing over, control and security, among many other issues.” SETTLEMENT | International Gallerie Magazine | Bina Sarkar.

11To learn more, visit www.stevesabella.space