Eternity / الأبدية

Eternity manifests itself here as an act of resistance against erasure, and as a living state of resistance in the face of its exact opposite; that opposite which colonialism practises through policies of negation, exclusion, displacement, and the systematic amputation of geography and the body. It is the ceaseless attempt to revive the spirit within that which is meant to be erased. For every act of extermination necessarily calls for an existential response that affirms immortality. Our bodies and our history never cease to exist; rather, it is the hegemony of imperialist powers that has blinded the world to the realisation of our inherent eternity and our indomitable beauty.

In the context of immortalising the moment, the image emerges as one manifestation of memory; the visible and the excluded, the present and the hidden. In ‘The Negative’, black and white emerge in a primal struggle and existential opposition, whilst the developed or completed photograph represents that embodiment which dispels the darkness and recovers the past moment to dwell in the ‘now’. Today, we seek to touch eternity by dissolving the conventional differences between black, white and colour, attempting to liberate the moment (the present, the past and the future) from the confines of time so that it may extend towards infinity; governed by no beginning and confined by no end, but rather a continuous overlap that transcends the boundaries of space.

 Returning to these realms of imagination and fantasy requires us to step outside the forms of presence with which we have been labelled. In this exhibition, we do not present images but we snatch moments from the act of erasure, seeking to embody the three dimensions of time in a continuous unity that resembles the moment of dreaming and waking; where one recalls all that has passed as if it were a living entity, whilst standing in the present with full awareness. This is eternity as a coherent space-time unit, from which no part can be severed without affecting the whole, and which is indivisible and indelible, no matter how hard those forces try to destroy or erase it. The evocation of eternity is manifested in our works through the use of colour, which represents and requires an emotional and dynamic immersion in the formulation of this meaning, with a view to adapting the material to create an intense emotional moment that transcends mortality.