Who owns the air?
3rd - 26th of November, 2024
Collaboration with Ayesha Ghaoul
Patara Gallery
Who owns the air? explores the complex politics of housing, seeing the 'home' as an elusive fantasy and a struggle for socio-political forces. The 'home' is more than just a place to live; it represents security, identity and stability. Furthermore, in an era of increasing real estate speculation, gentrification and forced displacement, the house has become both a commodity and a luxury.
The exhibition explored these apparent inconsistencies, prompting viewers to look at the concept of the home as an intensely political terrain. Fragile facades made of porcelain and glass, cracked and scratched when fired, expose the human ordeal created by an uncertainty from stability in flux Juxtaposing delicate porcelain houses with industrial steel racks, Ghaoul and Noro create a dialogue between the tenderness of human ambition and the uncompromising machinery of profit-driven progress- a metaphor for the intangible and transient nature of ownership in volatile markets.
The poem "Echoes in the Air" by Carmel Alabbasi (b. 1985), commissioned for the exhibition, is a poem about the concept of "owning the air", reflecting the terrible reality of war-torn areas, where the house often turns into ruins and families are left with nothing but air. Here the concept of property becomes blurred, as "property that is now 'just air" contrasts with the ephemeral and fragile nature of material possessions."Who owns the air?"
This question invites us to analyse the broader socio-political context in which home is a commodity, a place of belonging, and ultimately a human right.
The city’s air thickens with fume and despair,
burned people, melted buildings lost echoes stare.
How once I loved that high balcony with a view,
where waves and salt-kissed mornings anew.
How strange to trust in concrete's might,
in towers and walls, in structures and height,
when bombs can evaporate them, and lives scatter wide,
in air where dreams and frailty collide.
How did we convince ourselves we could retain
our lives in this air,
a piece of sky we imagined we’d own
We paid the banks, we made it a home,
Then, in one fleeting moment stacked stone on stone.
We coloured this air, brought warmth to its place,
until it grew flesh, until it had grace.
Yet here we linger in liminal skies,
never owning the earth, as the sky slips by.
In air we live, in air we weave,
the visible tales that let us believe,
but bombs make the solid vanish like mist,
and remind us of air, of lives that persist,
still invisible, as fragile as air—
only illusions still hanging there.
Carmel Alabbasi