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I feel incredibly privileged to have been invited to a three-month residency in Bethlehem at the Wonder Cabinet, an incredible art center designed by the brilliant Palestinian architects AAU Anastas.

Right in front of the spectacular local landscape where this unique and singular cultural and resistance project stands, you come across a horrifying and monstrous illegal colonial settlement staring at you.

This piece, as its name indicates, wants to free the landscape from this “architecture” of occupation, with the intention of returning to the original landscape without settlers in it.

This is a real site and situation-specific installation, that works not only for the Wonder Cabinet and the city of Bethlehem, but can be extrapolated and placed in any Palestinian cities and towns, as settlements expands all over the ocuppied West Bank.

The shapes or silhouettes that conceal the settlement and free up the landscape were created in various sizes and have been placed as a permanent installation at different points in the Wonder Cabinet and at various heights so that adults, children, and those standing and sitting can enjoy them. To cover the settlement, it is necessary to stand in the position. In addition to its material content, the project includes extensive research on the evolution of the landscape and the development of the occupation and settlements.

It also includes study materials on the shapes, layouts, silhouettes, and points for positioning the pieces. This material is intended to be presented in an exhibition format.

This piece also refers to a popular saying from my country: "No se puede tapar el Sol con un dedo" "You can't hide the sun with your finger" alluding to the fact that easy and simple solutions to large and complicated problems are impossible.

This saying is perfectly applicable to the problem of occupation and the settlements, since their vast expansion is a major problem that cannot be solved simply. As far as this piece is concerned, in other cities in the West Bank, settlements cannot be "hidden" with this silhouette, because they already occupy a large part of the territory.

The outline of the settlement was drawn using the windows of the Wonder Cabinet building as supports, placing transparent cardboard and tracing the edges from a perspective at various points and heights, these points would then be marked on site to be used as references where the piece completely hides the settlement.

VARIATIONS:

Thanks to the collaboration of the blacksmith artisans, we managed to make a stand that allows the piece to be regulated and adapted to different heights and with this, from the same vantage point, it can be used by children, adults and people seated or in wheelchairs.