Steve Sabella: Photography 1997–2014

Steve Sabella: Photography 1997–2014 surveys the work of an artist born in Jerusalem in 1975. Published by Hatje Cantz in 2014, it brings together projects concerned with exile, migration and the formation of identity. The named cycles include In Exile (2008), In Transition (2010), Metamorphosis (2012) and Independence (2013). Considering these projects together makes their changing approaches to displacement part of the book’s subject.

In Exile gives those questions a concrete photographic form. Sabella reworks photographed fragments of windows and walls into composite images, altering their orientation and assembling patterns out of displaced parts. These displaced fragments provide the series with its defining structure. The relationship between a recognisable place and its reconstruction in an image makes the experience of dislocation visible through photographic decisions.

The wider survey connects successive projects that respond to one another. Its account of identity develops through the relationship between an external world, the pictures made from it and the artist’s experience of displacement. For a collector, this is the specific interest of the publication: it allows the photographic treatment of exile to be followed across several bodies of work. The individual cycles provide different points of entry into a sustained enquiry, while the monograph gives that enquiry a dated publication context.

The English-language volume contains 208 pages and 162 photographs, in half cloth at 242 by 326 millimetres. Hubertus von Amelunxen edited it and contributes text alongside Kamal Boullata; design is credited to Nicolas Bourquin/Onlab. The September 2014 publication records the work at a particular stage, bringing the photographs and accompanying writing into a survey whose declared span is 1997–2014.

Since the early 1990s Steve Sabella (*1975 in Jerusalem) has consistently been creating cycles of work that comment on each other: Jerusalem in Exile (2006), Exit (2007), In Exile (2008), In Transition (2010), Euphoria (2010), Beyond Euphoria (2012), Metamorphosis (2012), and Independence (2013) comprise a signficant tableau of possible transitions and processes of dissolution between world and image, image and world. The book reads time and history out of the photographs and thus describes the genesis of Sabella’s photographic oeuvre under the aspects of exile, identity, migration, and the divided topologies of the 21st century. Sabella uses photography as the artistic language of existential exile. His relationship to the medium is powerful. “At the end which me am I in us?” asks the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. In this sense, Sabella researches the construction of identity.

Exhibitions: Berloni Gallery, London, March 6–May 10, 2014 | FotoFest Biennale, Houston, March 15–April 27, 2014 | Bahrain National Museum April 13–August 15, 2014 | Meem Gallery, Dubai, October 2014 | Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka, Fall 2014 | Metroquadro Gallery, Turin, March 2015
 
Exhibitions: Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait, September 21–October 21, 2014 | International Centre for Photography Scavi Scaligeri organized by Boxart Gallery, Verona, October 8–November 16, 2014 | Meem Gallery, Dubai, October 27-November 27, 2014
 

Edited by: Amelunxen Hubertus von
Designed by: Nicolas Bourquin, Onlab
Texts by: Amelunxen Hubertus von, Kamal Boullata
English
September 2014, 208 Pages , 162 Photos
half cloth
242mm x 326mm
ISBN:978-3-7757-3767-8

Publisher page editorial text:
| First monograph on this Palestinian artist’s extensive body of work
Since the early 1990s Steve Sabella (*1975 in Jerusalem) has consistently been creating cycles of work that comment on each other: Jerusalem in Exile (2006), Exit (2007), In Exile (2008), In Transition (2010), Euphoria (2010), Beyond Euphoria (2012), Metamorphosis (2012), and Independence (2013) comprise a signficant tableau of possible transitions and processes of dissolution between world and image, image and world. The book reads time and history out of the photographs and thus describes the genesis of Sabella’s photographic oeuvre under the aspects of exile, identity, migration, and the divided topologies of the 21st century. Sabella uses photography as the artistic language of existential exile. His relationship to the medium is powerful. “At the end which me am I in us?” asks the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. In this sense, Sabella researches the construction of identity.
Exhibitions: Berloni Gallery, London, March 6–May 10, 2014 | FotoFest Biennale, Houston, March 15–April 27, 2014 | Bahrain National Museum April 13–August 15, 2014 | Meem Gallery, Dubai, October 2014 | Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka, Fall 2014 | Metroquadro Gallery, Turin, March 2015
 

Exhibitions: Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait, September 21–October 21, 2014 | International Centre for Photography Scavi Scaligeri organized by Boxart Gallery, Verona, October 8–November 16, 2014 | Meem Gallery, Dubai, October 27-November 27, 2014

Publisher source ↗