‘Om/Mother (2023-25)

‘Om/Mother is a project, a series, a photo book, an endeavour in participation with the women and girls of 8 Palestinian families from Tel Rumeida, a neighbourhood in Hebron/H2 (Westbank) where Palestinians live as second rate citizens in their own country, next to radical illegal Israeli settlers and soldiers. The families are subjected to a continuous cocktail of violence, harassments, arbitrary arrests for indefinite time, physical and verbal abuse and always impunity for the settler-perpetrators. I got to know the almost 50 participating women in this hood in the course of several weeks-long visits in February and May 2023. The women photographed their homes, loved ones and surroundings then during the month of September 2023, because merely staying here constitutes their ultimate act of resistance against the occupation. We photographed with small analogue cameras, to convey a more blurry ambiguous feeling in contrast with the digital press images we usually see coming from this region. ‘OM/Mother is a feminist work of love.

‘OM/Mother has been published in DS Weekblad (De Standaard, BE)in October 2023 , in The Union Magazine, in Musee Magazine, in ZOUT magazine, it featured on De Donkere Kamer, Rektoverso and on culture program Pompidou on radio KLARA (VRT, BE). ‘Om/Mother was on television in the Sunday show of the VRT in De Zevende Dag. I was interviewed on the podcast De Donkere Kamer, by FishEye Magazine,‍ ‍by Marc Feustel on the artist talks at Paris Photo 24, I did several talks together with Adam Broomberg and Rafael Gonzales, like at Le Bal in Paris and at Double Dummy Studio in Arles and in March 2025 Tom Viaene interviewed me at Foundation A in Brussels. In 2024 there were exhibitions in Liege in Galerie Satelite (Archipel Programma BIP Liege), in Zaventem in De Factorij, and in Blanco, Ghent ( ‘I am the Smasher of Idols’ together with Firas El Hallak, Sirien Salameh and Sam Eggermont). In April and May 2025 we have organized an exhibition in the West Bank, in Bethlehem, in The Wonder Cabinet, so the women photographers participating and their families also got a chance to see their images displayed on the wall. 120 women and children came from Hebron in buses, some 30 kilometers, they defied checkpoints to see and experience the images of our project. It was a special day, with workshops for kids, singing, play and even a food market for Hebron products. Tameem Tamimi from Hebron made a video of this day, to be watched on vimeo. In June 2025 I participated, together with human rights defender Issa Amro from Tel Rumeida, in a symposium in Berlin on the power of art as resistance, organized by Arts of the Working Class. From June till September 2025, there was an exhibition in FOMU, Antwerp, exhibiting the images of the project, video, sound and contextual info. The eyecatcher here was probably our newly made video installation of 3 screens with excerpts of interviews of 16 women participating in the ‘Om/Mother project, talking on their lives, on Gaza, on photography and on the beauty and their companionship through the project.From October 2025 till February 2026 Spazio Labo in Bologna and curator Laura de Marco hosted the ‘Om/Mother exhibition, built in cooperation with the students of the Spazio Labo photography school. We keep doing lectures and talks.