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فير زملر غاليري Sfeir-Semler Gallery

The clouds are gone and have left me homeless, and  
The mountains have flung their mantles and concealed me
– Mahmoud Darwish

Walking into Sfeir-Semler’s first floor space in Hamburg, visitors will encounter a series of rolled fabrics, on which the imprints of rusted keys linger. Inspired by Ahmad Al-Za’atar, a poem by celebrated Palestinian author Mahmoud Darwish, Taysir Batniji’s installation from 1997 poignantly pays tribute to those forcibly displaced in 1948, who carried along the heavy door keys to their homes, thinking they will soon return. Batniji captures the traces of what looks like thick, iron-forged objects with a reddish-brown patina, that have become obsolete, as if trying to pin-down ethereal memories on the canvas.  

The work skips through decades and reflects here on a moment when history seems to echo itself, using a pivotal element in Batniji’s practice: Time. In several instances, he tries to capture fleeting instants, or to suspend split seconds, stretching them into abstract compositions that can take days to complete.

In Disruptions Batniji uses screenshots from video-calls with his family back in Gaza, that are blurred by poor connections. These distortions, rather than obstructing his communication, become integral to the artist’s most recent series of paintings. Based on Telegram news chat images, before their violent content fully downloads onto the screen, they are still-unseen photos that the artist meticulously paints. The process prolongs the moment of ignorance, resulting in almost serene, fluid works on canvas that suspend time, as if negating an unspeakable reality and preventing it from happening.

Using a similar stratagem, the artist translates accidental phone images into drawings on paper, a series that gave the exhibition its title Out of the Blue. Playing with time, Batniji transforms the fortuitous, unplanned, fleeting images into abstract pastels, often in hues of blacks, reds and yellows.

An insider observing his homeland from afar, Taysir Batniji creates work that viscerally flows from his personal experience, weaving raw emotions with deliberate aesthetic choices. Equally invested in the processes of making the work as he is in the resulting visual form, Batniji challenges viewers to confront both the physical and intangible traces of conflict and loss, using the distortion of distance and time created by new communication channels.

In ID Project the artist documents dealing with administration, summed up in this ready made work in a line of 16 facsimilies, it is related in what is less the story of a journey leading to French nationalisation than a constant reminder, confirmed by a phrase set in marble of an identity that is undefined - a project

For many years, Batniji has been collecting, photographing and documenting almost compulsively, traces of life that he accidentally encounters, and that are often left behind by long-gone passers-by: random objects, footprints and shoe impressions on grounds, unintentional pocket-phone snapshots, screenshots... In Homeless Colors, 2024, he uses found colored crayons, ballpoint, or felt pens, going through a meditative, almost spiritual exercise, to retreat from the harsh realities he is facing. He systematically fills drawing paper with monochromic colors until each pen runs out. The process then comes to a natural halt, dictating the completion of an artwork.