The Unbearable Halfness of Being is an exhibition of drawings, embroidered textiles, talismanic objects, wood carvings, video and neon light works by artist Jumana Emil Abboud.
Jumana Emil Abboud (b. 1971, Shefa’amer) is Palestinian and is currently based between Jerusalem and London where she is completing her PhD. Her practice is grounded in the Palestinian cultural landscape and she draws on the traditions of folklore, myth-making and storytelling that once animated community life, particularly around times of family or community gathering, such as seed-sowing, water collection or harvest. She works across drawing, installation, video and performance, often collaboratively, exploring personal and collective memory and practices of sharing and re-telling as ways to address experiences of loss and longing and the impacts of decades of dispossession and annexation.
For more than 10 years, Jumana has focused on oral histories relating to water sources, springs, wells and rivers: ‘For thousands of years, the natural landscape we lived in in Palestine was a terrain of enchantment. The natural water source – spring, well, stream – was such a terrain, inhabited by spirits, good and bad. I like to refer to such waters as spirited sites.’
At CAMPLE LINE, Jumana will present 18 drawings alongside a selection of beeswax charm objects, carved Sacred water guardians from 2016, embroidered textiles based on drawings by Jumana and made collaboratively in 2021 with ‘Ein Qiniya resident Suha atta Alqam, a small crochet made by Jumana’s mother Clemence, and two neon light works, shaped to form the Arabic letter Ein, meaning eye or water source. A selection of films made in collaboration with photographer Issa Freij, will screen over the period of the exhibition.