Zet w Zift (Olive-Oil and Tar)
An Installation: Mixed media; Olive oil, Tar, Metal tools, Concrete blocks, wooden bowl.
3.50m*40cm*70cm.
Najjar takes the mundane objects and materials and transforms them; Two buckets of different raw materials – olive oil and tar – are mixed together throughout the duration of the exhibition, and soldered to produce a hybrid figure. An illusion is composed by the mixing of olive oil and tar inside a bowl, when what appears as a polished, unidentified map, shines through the mixture. A mere suggestion, a visual metaphor, is created, of a new social and political reality.
Nissreen Najjar has frequently used ready-made objects in her work. Her decision to do so is prompted by a disdain for monumentality, and a penchant for the everyday. Her approach typically involves taking everyday objects, and transforming their role and identity with the influence of the political and social abstraction of the geo cartography. Embodying hereafter both the familiar and the unfamiliar.