Hamada El-Kept

Born 1994 Gaza, Palestine

Displaced in Belgium

Under Surveillance centers the experience of a life under constant surveillance by the Israeli occupation, and presents an all encompassing mise-en-abyme. El Kept rethinks exhibition design and the appreciation of art within another context. By allowing the complexities of life under surveillance to take center stage, while holding a mirror up to the omnipresent eye of the occupation, a new constellation of meanings between eye and body emerge. The exhibition envelopes the viewer in a kind of whirlwind of emotions with liberatory potential.

Residents of Gaza live under strict and continuous surveillance. Israeli drones invade people’s privacy, and capture “high-quality images” of people, their homes, and public spaces. This intense monitoring causes significant distress and suffering among the residents. The situation is worsened by advanced technologies, including A.I., which enable more sophisticated forms of control and violence. The project reflects on the broader implications of this surveillance, including forced displacement and ethnic cleansing. It highlights the emotional and psychological burden on the people of Gaza, who live in a state of perpetual emergency, where one’s daily life becomes a series of crises. The project involves an installation that simulates the separation and control experienced by the people. A wall of various dimensions integrates itself into the gallery space, reflecting both physical and psychological barriers imposed by the occupation. The wall, constructed from wood and metal and then covered with cement to give it the appearance of the separation wall in Palestine. It is designed to alter viewers’ experience within the gallery space, placing the art patron into the “aesthetic” reality of lives under the constant threat of surveillance systems. El Kept presents his own “high quality images”, but one that centers the experience of life under surveillance, as well as ‘portraits’ of the data collectors themselves.

How does the experience of art relate to a life under surveillance? Are a gallery’s visitors able to move freely without fear for their physical safety? Where are the automated killing systems in art spectatorship? What does it change about the meaning of collection?

El Kept’s work attempts to turn the ‘camera’ around, holding a mirror to the drones, walls, and lenses, putting them on display within the context of art. Surveillance systems see human beings as numbers, objects, and targets. And Israel proudly offers Palestine as a playground to test all these new gadgets. El Kept reframes this reality within the gallery, at once subjecting visitors to this dystopia, while the simulation and imitation of these malevolent tactics, mocks their power and omnipresence, allowing visitors to develop a greater resilience.

The apartheid wall is a physical and psychological barrier that impedes the movements, dreams, ambitions, and hopes of individuals, cutting off their communication with the outside world and severing their physiological and geographical connections. It threatens personal freedom, leaving individuals more isolated and withdrawn. One then becomes closed off, feeling trapped in a vast prison, desperately trying to break free from this control, circling around them like a bird whose wings have been clipped.

Notes on the Imagery and Exhibition Design

The individual no longer has a private space. The issue of monitoring people through cameras, mobile phones, and collecting of personal data is a reality in many societies, but Gaza is the only place where its inhabitants live under strict and deliberate surveillance around the clock.

The blockade imposed on Gaza for more than a decade—by land, sea, and air—has been used by the occupation as a tool of control. Israeli aircrafts have been employed to photograph homes, public facilities, gardens, agricultural areas, the beach, and every sandy area in Gaza. Then there is the ubiquitous sounds of reconnaissance drones, years of unceasing buzzing is a form of psychological torture, especially since many of the drones now have electronic machine guns and bombs. They have killed people in public streets, in parks, in hospitals, and in public facilities, even reaching to the bedroom and the bathroom.

Unfortunately, technology has evolved to include artificial intelligence, which has become a tool that assists the occupation in innovating ways to kill more recklessly, as if they are playing a computer game that can end the life of a person or even an entire family with the push of a button. Some paintings depict the state of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing practiced by the occupation against families, forcing them to leave their homes under threats of destruction.

I aim to draw these faces filled with sadness, suffering, and fear of the unknown when no one knows where they are heading. You can see their eyes and witness different stories, emotions, and feelings. I depict trembling and fear with irregular lines, deviating from a natural form that no longer exists. Instead, life has turned into repeated states of emergency and a suspended existence.

In other paintings, we see expressive scenes reflecting the hollow features that have changed due to harsh conditions, making them more rigid than others. We see symbolic forms in the works that we may not see in reality, but I envision them in my mind and then place them in a work to create a state of shock for the viewer and generate a dialogue between them and the work, prompting questions.

We also see bright rays of sunshine that melt their features, exhausting them physically and psychologically, where there is no exaggeration in the intensity of its brightness and its harmful effect on faces that have become pale. Throughout this project, I think of emerging from the painting and embodying the drawn elements as a reflection of reality by creating the separation wall as an installation.

The exhibition also consists of paintings drawn with acrylic on rubble, embellishing the debris of surveillance. This is specified through the materials used.

The re-created separation wall has measurements different from reality, but it will nevertheless divide the audience in the exhibition just as the occupation divides the Palestinians in their land. The wall’s height is lower than a person’s height, visitors then feel larger than the wall transferring the sense of control. A shorter wall will give visitors space to interact with it in a different way and under a moral influence. Additionally, it consists of separate pieces that can be formed and transported wherever needed, made of wood and iron, and then covered with cement to give it the real shape of the wall.

This wall obstructs human movements, dreams, aspirations, and hopes, preventing them from reaching the outside world and severing the psychological and geographical connection between them. It threatens individual freedom, making them more withdrawn and isolated, and less experienced in community life and cultures. The individual remains closed off, feeling he is in a large prison, trying with all his might to escape control, circling around himself like a bird with a clipped wing.

An aerial view shows the wall’s shape on the ground, designed so that the entrances are very narrow, making the audience feel the difficulty of passing from one space to another unless they jump over the wall. Jumping over the wall is an act in itself that reflects a new and innovative concept for analyzing control and its psychological dimensions that challenge freedom and the right to move and travel.

In another work, a scene is depicted where a person stands beside the wall, we see the person as if they are a giant compared to the wall. This exaggeration and play with the elements serve as a form of intellectual enlightenment and mastery over the brutality of control of human lives.

Within the gallery, surveillance cameras will be placed with the wall, functioning not only to monitor individuals but to place them in a state of observation when they move. It will be set in the hall such that after seven minutes, the camera will operate and take a picture. Another idea for the cameras is to capture some images and print them in black and white, displaying the date and time automatically, which will then be distributed to the audience at the end of the exhibition.

The exhibition will consist of visual works painted with acrylic on canvas, walls, and surveillance cameras, as shown in the image, providing the paintings with a pulsating life that brings vitality and spirit to the space. The individual holds the keys to determine his fate and future, which guarantees his rights and the principles of humanity.

The exhibition will also serve as a form of visual and sensory nourishment that adds a sense of participation in basic human issues, making individuals more capable of survival and sustainability.

A QR code will be placed on the ground, as shown in the image, so that when scanned, it will take you to a site divided in Palestine, narrating the story of that land and its owners, and what the wall has caused in terms of suffering and misery that the people there endure daily, such as in the West Bank, Gaza, and the rest of the lands. These codes will provide viewers with a greater ability to obtain more information in a modern way.

This project is a humanitarian message that includes all the occupied lands, sharing the goals of the occupiers and their brutality that threatens human existence in those areas, working to cleanse them and replace them with new people as a gift.

This is the initial proposal, and I expect the exhibition to be deeper and more profound. I will document closely what the audience says, feels, and wishes for in the near future, retaining all the questions that will open new doors that I will work on in the future.

 

Hamada El Kept is a visual artist from Gaza, Palestine. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Al-Aqsa University in Gaza. He received an artistic residency at Globe Aroma in Brussels for the year 2024 and obtained an artistic residency at the «academia espain rome» in 2023, and a residency «Shbabik» For contemporary art 2019 and 2021.He held his first art exhibition at the French Consulate in Gaza with his project entitled «Empty bowl» Then he received a grant for the Butterfly Effect project from the French Center,which he implemented with children who were psychologically affected during the 2020 war on Gaza, and another project entitled “Creating” the year 2021 with children with disabilities in northern Gaza. Hamada worked as an expressive art trainer in the Safe Spaces project with the Tamer Foundation for seven years, and he participated in many group exhibitions, the most recent was in the “Sahab Museum” project, which was displayed within the “signal” exhibition by artist Mohamed Brouisa at the “Palais de Tokyo” and the “Ce que la Palestine offre au monde” exhibition at the “Institut du monde Arabe” in Paris and the Open Art Biennale, which was held in the Swedish city of Örebro in 2024.