Oraib Toukan

Ensemble

Oraib Toukan is an artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans photography, film, writing, and printed matter. Raised and shaped by the landscapes of Jordan and Palestine, her essay films, photo assemblages and texts delve into relationships between the tender and the horrific, materiality and loss, grief and meaning. While exploring the emancipatory potential of images, her gaze often wanders unexpectedly to natural phenomena; cacti, a horse’s neck or an eyelash.

Influenced by a dialogue over the years with the Palestinian pedagogue Munir Fasheh on turbeh (‘local soil’ in Arabic) and inspired by the Palestinian writer and lawyer Raja Shehadeh’s writings on sarha (to wander freely with the terrain), Toukan crafts an intimate and uniquely haptic perspective on images from what she terms their “soil grain” – reading images as topographies, and topographies as images. Things Bigger Than What Can Be Seen, published by Archive Books as part of we refuse_d, explores these symmetries and analogies and translates some of Toukan’s essays on seeing into Arabic for the first time. A composition of photographs selected from the book are presented here, and imbued with notations titled Index (Living Things).

we refuse_d is produced by Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, on the occasion of their 15th anniversary, and presented in partnership with M HKA.
Curated by Nadia Radwan and Vasıf Kortun.

Items

View all

About M HKA / Mission Statement

The M HKA is a museum for contemporary art, film and visual culture in its widest sense. It is an open place of encounter for art, artists and the public. The M HKA aspires to play a leading role in Flanders and to extend its international profile by building upon Antwerp's avant-garde tradition. The M HKA bridges the relationship between artistic questions and wider societal issues, between the international and the regional, artists and public, tradition and innovation, reflection and presentation. Central here is the museum's collection with its ongoing acquisitions, as well as related areas of management and research.

About M HKA Ensembles

The M HKA Ensembles represent our first steps towards initiating the public to today's art-related digital landscape. With the help of these new media, our aim is to offer our artworks a better and fuller array of support for their presentation and public understanding.