Being-Refuge /Serrefugio
Being-Refuge /Serrefugio
Being-Refuge /Serrefugio
Being-Refuge /Serrefugio
A series of photo-etchings and lithographs based on photographs of the six Cities of Refuge, biblical towns in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea where perpetrators of manslaughter could claim the right of asylum and be protected from blood vengeance elsewhere allowed against them by law. In present day Israel/Palestine, these out-of-the way towns are the focus of political territorial conflict.
Three of them exist in Israel as archeological remains I have photographed. Three others exist in Palestine or Jordan as invisible traces beneath existing cities I cannot reach as a Jewish Israeli citizen. Palestinian friends— goodwill messengers and photographers— on the other side of the border have photographed them for me. The prints insert a fictional construction— a temporary and precarious tentlike structure— into these sites, to address the worldwide problem of forcible displacement millions of people undergo due to political conflicts and persecution.