6’41”
2021
Mahmoud Alhaj recounts the isolation caused by Israeli occupation policies represented by the apartheid wall and blockade imposed over the Gaza Strip, both of which represent direct violence towards Palestinian people and geography, and a violation of his human rights. He uses a set of documents from different sources detailing the time and space of the subject (wall and siege) through images, maps, videos, and slides of artwork he produced using Google Maps.
Mahmoud exercises his right to see – the most basic of rights – through Google Maps, and, after years of using it as his only window to see the world, discovers that these maps have been ‘fixed’ since 2008. They do not provide a true picture of reality (with 25 times fewer details than the rest of the world). Among the details hidden is the apartheid wall, despite its enormous mass, because of the strict censorship.