RED CUBE 2016- present
Multi-channel video installation
RED CUBE, is a multidisciplinary immersive experience that retraces fragments
of a boy’s childhood memories and dreams born in Damascus. The story of a
perpetual exile between his imaginary world and the physical reality, longing for
a lost homeland.
An ongoing process to breakthrough or setback the vicious circle between the
past and the present that each of us could somehow be trapped in at some point
in our life. This constant out of place that we always try to escape.
RED CUBE is an emotional journey that explores the negative space between
traditions, histories, and cultures specific in time and space. It’s an attempt to be
liberated from the definition of self-identity or belonging.
I started to work on this project right after I lost my father in 2016 with the first
experimental video titled “road song...”.
road song... 2020
9 min 30
“ Is it not an act of freedom to free yourself from your past and let go
of your memories?”
In 2016, I traveled from New York to Beirut via Paris, to finally reach
Damascus where my mother still lives. Twenty hours of travel separates
New York from Damascus, I crossed and retraced twenty years of
separation from my native city. Perhaps, the very act of movement, the
traveling phase, far from everyday distractions generates a quest for
self.
RED CUBE is an essay that tempts a long search for truth. The
complex and vague relationship that I have with my origins, the rupture I
created with what was supposed to be my homeland, and the absence of
homesick feelings; make me think that the closer we get to the truth,
the further we move away from our reality.