Remnants, 2024 (ongoing)
Oil on canvas, dimensions variable.
View of the solo show « Out of the blue », Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg, 2024.
Since October 2023, the artist has been receiving daily images from Gaza via the Telegram messaging network, where the unimaginable violence of Israeli tanks, aircraft, and drones is unfolding. When a photo arrives on Batniji’s screen, it appears blurred before it is fully downloaded and its raw form is revealed. It is this precise moment—this suspended, fleeting instant before the worst is confirmed—that the Palestinian artist focuses on, and which he seeks, in a way, to extend infinitely in his work Remnants.
In this sense, as a deliberate distortion of reality, he takes a screenshot of the still undefined, blurred image, which he then reproduces in oil on canvas. While these works may seem to present interlacing, fluid, and imprecise forms, they are in fact driven by a clear intention: to prolong this moment of ignorance and, if only in thought, ward off the inevitable confrontation with an unbearable reality.
