A room in Reims: A study of body-place relation

The meetings of the “Freedom of Movement group” coincided with the first few months of my presence in Rheims in France and after my travels through Madrid, Berlin, and Rome. It was the first time I left the prison of Gaza and crossed states-borders. I moved from one isolation to another, from a collective prison to a prison where individual freedom dominated at the expense of collective freedom. I moved from chaos, lack of safety, borders, barriers, military orders, and the long hours and days of waiting in Gaza to the chaos of living and the chaos of dying in Europe.  I was isolated, and my body was suppressed in the atmosphere of silence as if I was in a coma with my fatigued body. The noise of Gaza did not concern me as much as the silence of my living place in France. I started thinking about my body’s relationship with its surrounding, the room I occupy with its simple and limited contents: a table, a coffee cup, a bed, a blanket. As well as questioning freedom, movement, noise, and silence. Through the Movement Group conversations, I began researching body’s movement from one geography to another, and from one limited space to another by drawing my surroundings and my confined body.

The result is this series of drawings that deals with the body in relation to space and objects. Through these drawings, I was able to confront my struggles in a new space.

Detailed Images (select for closer viewing):

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A room in Reims: A study of body-place relation in Arabic:

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Feature image: Khalid Jarada, detail from A room in Reims: A study of body-place relation, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

Image description: Charcoal and watercolour drawing of a figure leaning back onto a narrow bed. Drawn in outline form, their knees are bent over the edge of the bed and feet planted firmly on the floor.

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Khaled Jarada is a Palestinian artist from Gaza, currently living in France. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology- Multimedia, from Palestine University in Gaza. He uses drawing, animation, and graphic storytelling in his works, which deals with issues of identity, memory, and the human body. Jarada has created visuals for several children’s books and stories, including The Bull that Stole the Kangaroo’s Cloak, (2019) with Tamer Institute for Community Education; Ant in my Computer (2015), translated to Portuguese, and Jamileh, a graphic story for youth, (2020). He has participated in several exhibitions including Color of this World, (2019) at the Tamer Institute; Lights on Gaza at the at Les Amarres Center in Paris in 2022, Art Now at Gallery One in Ramallah in 2021, and in Tomorrow’s Memory at the German Cultural Center in Ramallah (2022). Jarada has residencies at Shababeek Art Centre in Gaza, the Spanish Royal Academy and at Reims, France (2021-2022). He is a recipient of the second award of Gaza Video Festival, and the first award for his work Dreams Collector at the “Digital November” festival organized by the French Cultural Institute in Jerusalem.