Galerie Claude Lemand

Steve Sabella (born 1975, Jerusalem, Palestine) is an award-win­ning artist, writer and public spea­ker based in Berlin. He uses pho­to­gra­phy and pho­to­gra­phic ins­tal­la­tion as his prin­ci­pal modes of expres­sion.

His work has been exhi­bi­ted inter­na­tio­nally and is held in col­lec­tions inclu­ding those of the British Museum in London and Mathaf : Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, where he was one of the artists com­mis­sio­ned for the inau­gu­ral exhi­bi­tion in 2010.
In September 2016, Sabella publi­shed his award-win­ning memoir The Parachute Paradox with Kerber Verlag. The artist’s first mono­graph Steve Sabella - Photography 1997-2014 was publi­shed by Hatje Cantz in col­la­bo­ra­tion with the Akademie der Künste Berlin, with texts by Hubertus von Amelunxen and Kamal Boullata. He has publi­shed essays on the art market, was a spea­ker at TEDx Marrakech (2012), and has been the sub­ject of seve­ral docu­men­ta­ries, inclu­ding In the Darkroom with Steve Sabella (2014), scree­ned inter­na­tio­nally. Steve recei­ved the 2017 AFAC grant for his new photo pro­ject Palestine - UNSETTLED.

Sabella holds an MA in Photographic Studies from the University of Westminster and an MA in Art Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London. In 2008 he recei­ved the Ellen Auerbach Award from the Akademie der Künste Berlin.
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“I encoun­te­red the work of Steve Sabella at a time when the art of pho­to­gra­phy, or
pho­to­gra­phy as art, seemed increa­sin­gly irre­le­vant to me, unat­ta­ched to a world long
since over­drawn by images…It obviously needed a Palestinian artist doing asto­ni­shing
work to shake the very foun­da­tions of the cer­tainty of my view and inter­pre­ta­tion.”

Hubertus von Amelunxen (Author and Curator, Member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. President of the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland).

Steve Sabella’s art prac­tice, as Amelunxen has writ­ten in the artist’s mono­graph cove­ring 20 years of work, upends the common notions of pho­to­gra­phy in our image-satu­ra­ted world. Since his begin­nings in Jerusalem, Palestine, Sabella has pushed the medium to its limits, from expe­ri­men­ta­tion in dar­kroom pro­ces­ses to iPhone pho­to­gra­phy. In doing so, he has consis­tently invi­ted vie­wers to ques­tion the appea­rance of rea­lity, ope­ra­ting both as an artist and resear­cher who unlocks visual codes sur­roun­ding us. His works are, as the his­to­rian and artist Kamal Boullata writes, “a dream to dis­co­ver.”

Perhaps what Boullata refers to is an ima­gi­na­tive world dee­pe­ning with every image Sabella crea­tes, each inde­pen­dent and inter­connec­ted. To unders­tand his recent art­works, cri­tics often refer to the first. And yet, the uni­ver­ses contai­ned in his works are always placed in dia­lo­gue with the world we inha­bit. Encountering his 38 Days of Re-Collection (2014), one sees ancient frag­ments, pieces of chip­ping fres­cos, until noti­cing the pho­to­gra­phic detail of a kit­chen coun­ter or wooden ladder, and reads the cap­tion : “B&W white film nega­ti­ves (gene­ra­ted from digi­tal images) prin­ted with photo emul­sion spread on colo­red paint frag­ments col­lec­ted from Jerusalem’s Old City house walls.” In this capa­city to be both radi­cally ima­gi­na­tive in his visuals, and reflec­tive of the his­to­ri­cal rea­li­ties from which they ori­gi­nate, Sabella has conti­nuously redrawn the border of truth and illu­sion.

For all of Sabella’s formal expe­ri­men­ta­tion, he is also an artist who dares to speak to the poli­tics and powers of today. The pho­to­graphs from 38 Days of Re-Collection were taken in a Palestinian home occu­pied by Israelis since 1948. His ins­tal­la­tion Settlement–Six Israelis & One Palestinian (2010), com­mis­sio­ned for Mathaf : Arab Museum of Modern Art, places the viewer in the midst of a spa­tial repre­sen­ta­tion of the conflict, with six life-sized pho­to­graphs of Israelis on one side of an inter­ro­ga­tion room, and one of a Palestinian - the artist him­self - directly oppo­site, all of them clad only in their under­wear and stan­ding in front of an impo­sing concrete wall. Sabella pho­to­gra­phed the Israelis, and an Israeli pho­to­gra­phed Sabella. Still, concepts of natio­na­lity need not com­ple­tely define this work. There is a pro­vo­ca­tion to its blunt title and pre­sen­ta­tion, yet, sup­por­ting the ges­ture is a many-laye­red concep­tual struc­ture, pro­bing the rela­tions bet­ween self and other, pas­sive spec­ta­tor and active sup­por­ter. No doubt these pho­to­gra­phed sub­jects also speak to the pecu­lia­rity of indi­vi­duals regar­ding each other.

In mer­ging the human and came­ral gaze, Sabella has some­ti­mes trea­ted the camera like a brush, pro­du­cing ges­tu­ral and fluid forms from the basis of a static image. Critics and scho­lars have found a pain­terly qua­lity in his works, such as the kine­tic bodies of the Independence (2013) series, whose photos Sabella took with an iPhone. Others have noted a musi­ca­lity, lin­king notions of poly­phony and coun­ter­point to a body of work that so often brings diver­gent voices into contact. In photo-col­la­ges like In Exile (2008), Metamorphosis (2012), and Sinopia (2014), Sabella cuts, layers and tiles pic­tu­res of the eve­ry­day, such as images of Bahrain’s poli­ti­cal graf­fiti (and its over­pain­ting by the police), or a cactus stan­ding on a win­dow­sill in London. These vibrant planes of color and form give a pulse of our world, but also conjure worlds unseen. Sabella is an artist who never repeats him­self, so each of his works stands as a unique media­tor bet­ween past and future, absence and pre­sence, rea­lity as such and dreams yet to be dis­co­ve­red.
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Steve SABELLA, In Exile, 2008.
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By Charlotte Bank, Nafas Art Magazine - Universe in Universe, July 2010, Steve Sabella, In Exile.
Physical exile in London fol­lo­wed mental exile in 2007. There, his artis­tic grap­pling with the omni­pre­sent fee­lings of alie­na­tion took on a new, more com­plex shape. The win­dows shown from mul­ti­ple pers­pec­ti­ves in the works of In Exile are views from the place where the artist lives. The sym­bo­lism here is inten­tio­nally many-laye­red. The win­dows pro­vide pros­pects and hope, see­ming to permit the widest variety of angles of view, but still remain closed and keep the viewer out­side, like an unin­vol­ved obser­ver. Life plays out in front of the window, but access to it is blo­cked. Here the artist seems a cap­tive of the eter­nal search for him­self in the mosaic of his mental land­scape. He draws the viewer into dis­tur­bing views and robs him of balance and secu­rity. He decons­tructs the fami­liar in order to assem­ble it anew, the­reby crea­ting a new cons­tel­la­tion of rea­lity that esta­bli­shes paral­lels to the expe­rien­ces of a never-ending exile.
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By Najat Rahman, Syracuse University Press, 2015, In the Wake of the Poetic.

In Steve Sabella’s haun­ting work In Exile, images recur­rently depict a somber but meti­cu­lously cons­truc­ted exile. Each image seems to repeat and pro­li­fe­rate images of houses or apart­ments, as if they are set­tle­ments or homes arti­fi­cially cons­truc­ted and impo­sed. The images are imbued with the dark colors blue and gray, brown and black, as we see in the image In Exile 1. In In Exile 2 spaces are sur­roun­ded with barbed wired. As Sabella once pro­clai­med, “I stitch my wounds with barbed wire.” The “recons­ti­tu­tion” of self is para­doxi­cally one of vio­lent sutu­ring that has not been able to rid rea­lity of barbed wires, at home or in exile, but remains libe­ra­tory. With light ema­na­ting from the inside of these inte­riors at night, the images are not without a sense of hope. Despite the dark gray, blue, and black, the flit­ter of inte­rior light sug­gests move­ment none­the­less, per­haps a break­through from all limi­ta­tions.
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By Charlotte Bank, Institute for Middle East Understanding, March 28, 2016, Re-cons­truc­ting Dasein : The Works of Steve Sabella.

The works of Steve Sabella reflect simi­lar concerns. A native of Old Jerusalem, that ever­contes­ted piece of land whose pri­vi­lege (or curse) it is to be holy to the three main mono­theis­tic faiths, Sabella has been on a relent­less jour­ney since he left his home town through the frag­ments of his own psyche, to para­phrase a sen­tence by Mourid Barghouti. A jour­ney that has led him to finally come to terms with his state of per­pe­tual alie­na­tion and even find the libe­ra­tion that root­less­ness can also offer. Steve Sabella has now rea­ched the point to which Vilém Flusser refers in the fol­lo­wing words, “Emigrés become free, not when they deny their lost home­land, but when they come to terms with it.” Since the col­la­ges of In Exile (2008), a series crea­ted in London one year after having left his home town, Sabella has been using large scale pho­to­gra­phic col­la­ges to reflect on this exilic state of mind.
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By Sara Rossino, May 2010, Exhibition Catalogue, Metroquadro Gallery, Turin, Steve Sabella, In Exile. Conversation with the Artist.

The first time you find your­self in front of the art­works which make up the In Exile series by Steve Sabella, you have a strange fee­ling of fami­lia­rity. Not with regards to the places which are fea­tu­red in the images, frag­ments of a sub­jec­tive rea­lity which is alien to the viewer, details of the eve­ry­day London life which the artist has been living with his family for the past three years since he left the Old City of Jerusalem. These shards of cap­tu­red memo­ries, decons­truc­ted and recons­truc­ted, are inti­mate to Sabella because they belong to his daily dimen­sion, but are dis­tant from the spec­ta­tor, lacking a fami­liar or reco­gni­za­ble refe­rence, extrac­ted from an ano­ny­mous anyw­here.
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Cedar Wings Magazine, August 2014, Steve Sabella : Insights into the Nature of Identity and Visual Reality.

Sabella’s pro­ject In Exile explo­red the mental image that Palestinians hold of Jerusalem and has gained inter­na­tio­nal atten­tion, lea­ding to its pro­duc­tion into a docu­men­tary film. Consequently, Sabella has been using photo col­lage as a visual form for the state of mind that results from living in ‘mental exile’ and the trans­cen­dence of this state towards Independence (2013). As he writes, “the hard work was fin­ding how to allow for a new trans­for­ma­tion, while accep­ting that my DNA will always stay the same.”
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By Sheyma Buali, Harper’s Bazaar Art Arabia, July 2014, Review : Fragments.

Through Berloni Gallery’s floor-to-cei­ling win­dows, Steve Sabella’s large-scale pho­to­graphs appea­red like frag­ments, a fit­ting title for this four-part retros­pec­tive of the Palestinian artist’s work. Closer ins­pec­tion of Exile (2008), Sabella’s splin­te­red mosaics of images, reveals win­dows that are open, closed, opaque or pro­tec­ted by cages. The most stri­king of all depicts Cecile, the artist’s daugh­ter, loo­king through her window in dif­fe­rent direc­tions as images of her are cut up, mir­ro­red and repea­ted. This series opened the exhi­bi­tion and set the tone for the frac­tu­red fee­lings, frus­tra­tion and obs­truc­tions that Sabella nar­ra­tes through his pho­to­graphs.
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By Hubertus Von Amelunxen, 2014, Steve Sabella. Photography 1997-2014.

In Exile (2008) is a cut through the place, a cut in the place, and a clear deci­sion. The series consists of five, large-format almost square color images. Only when the viewer comes close to the images does a concrete figure emerge from the oscil­la­ting pat­tern of dis­lo­ca­ted, upen­ded, or bent frag­ments. The five images share the mor­pho­logy of dis­lo­ca­ted frag­ments shaken into an order, the onto­lo­gi­cal foun­da­tion of the place seen from an inter­me­diate space and cast off… In Exile exhi­bits her­me­tic struc­tu­res, blind win­dows, pro­tru­sions of disap­poin­ted trans­pa­rency… And like In Exile and Euphoria, a rhyth­mic move­ment is at work in the images ; now an ara­bes­que sweep moving across the image, now a clearly contra­pun­tal arran­ge­ment, so that the images cor­res­pond to an almost musi­cal wri­ting, a score or nota­tion.
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The Great March of Return, 2019.

1. Photo.
Impression jet d’encre sur diasec monté sur alu­mi­nium, 200 x 200 x 3,5 cm. Signé et numé­roté par l’artiste. Edition de 6 + 2 EA.

The Great March of Return is a col­lage inclu­ding over one thou­sand pho­to­graphs cap­tu­red by five Palestinian jour­na­lists from Gaza of the crowds who have gathe­red every Friday since March 2018 to end the Israeli occu­pa­tion. These images are contras­ted with photos taken of outer space mer­ging the her­me­ti­cally sealed Strip with infi­nity, crea­ting a monu­men­tal “pre­sent-day fresco” demons­tra­ting a nation’s eter­nal fight for libe­ra­tion.
Journalistes pho­to­gra­phes : Atieh Darwish, Mustafa Mohamad, Majdi Fathi, Mohammed Asad, Ashraf Amra.

2. Vidéo.
Durée : 10’. Son : Gaza Suite, com­po­si­tion ori­gi­nale de Ghazi Barakat.
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Oeuvres dans les Collections publi­ques :
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Donation Claude & France Lemand 2018, 2020. Musée, Institut du monde arabe, Paris.
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