Bisan Abu-Eisheh

The Archival Mechanism

Bisan Abu-Eisheh worked on questions of identity on the basis of his father’s private archive. His father was imprisoned by the Israelis at the beginning of the 1980s. More than thirty years old now, the archive material documents the exchange of letters between his father and people outside the prison during his father’s sentence, but also contains images and written texts that were exchanged with other (former) prisoners after his release. In his study of this material, the artist’s attention was directed not only towards the unraveling of a private story but also towards the social values, political language, circumstances, and ideologies of all those involved, considered against the background of the ideal of freedom within a society under occupation.

Bisan Abu-Eisheh *1985, lives in London and Jerusalem. He studied Visual Contemporary Art at the International Academy of Arts, Palestine, and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London.