Khalil Rabah

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 2010

This work is in very good condition. There are some very faint cracks along the spine. All pages of the dictionary undulate slightly. All of the above is inherent to the artist's working process. The colours in the catalogue illustration are accurate.
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Pain is a major theme in the work of Khalil Rabah.  Although he was far from the Israeli invasion of Lebanon during the 1970s, it was a major political upheaval which left an acute impression on him.  Whether by crawling through broken glass in his 1982 Self-Invasion performance or in the seemingly innocuous tree grafting video entitled Grafting1995, Khalil's work constantly references grief and pain.

Another principal theme for Rabah's work is racial inequality. In his 1997 photography series Half-Self-Portraits, the artist obscures half his face with plasters provoking a feeling of sharp physical discomfort. The work highlights the difference between his natural skin-colour and the caucasian tone of the 'white' plasters. Rabah emphasizes his perceived racial inferiority, whereby even the most basic, and indeed necessary, aspects of life are geared towards a politically and economically dominant race without thought for other ethnic groups.

The physical 'splitting' of the face in this series is also a symbolic division of the self.  His inner-self, wounded by racial and religious tension, is contrasted with his outer-self, an ethnic appeareance by which he is stereotyped.

Within Philistine 1997, there is a more subtle incorporation of self-harm. Rather than maiming his own body, Rabah uses a book as a vessel upon which to inflict pain.  The nails that sparkle across the surface of the book recall the glass shards which cut his flesh in Self-Invasion, and bring to mind the physical reality of barbed wire that frames the world in which he lives.

In consciously leaving the definition of the word Philistine readable, "Philistine: n. often cap (Philistine inhabitant of ancient Philistia {Palestine}: a materialistic person, esp: one who is smugly insensitive or indifferent to intellectual or artistic values," Rabah makes a pointed reference to identity, prejudice and racial inequality.  By nailing the remainder of the dictionary shut, but leaving the menacing definition clear, he metaphorically damages flesh whilst leaving the exterior visible but traumatised. 

The definition in accordance to the Oxford English Dictionary encapsulates his race, which is a brutal blow to the Palestinian, and is representative of the way in which Rabah feels he and his people are perceived.  Rabah believes its continual use is representative of the ever-present inherent racism of society. Furthermore it is damaging on a personal level to Rabah, as its definitive explanation precludes his talent and ability as an artist. 

The viewer is confronted with an artwork steeped in power and meaning. Rabah relates this work to the dictionary works by Joseph Kosuth.  "Yet it goes beyond their conceptual and cerebral concerns by infusing the object itself with both tactile expressiveness and psycho-political meaning." (Gannit Ankori, Palestinian Art, London 2006, p. 161).