To Sleep in a Room and Dream is about memories, land, and displacement. Having lived half my life in Israel and half in the United States, I have accumulated a multitude of memories that are nestled on two separate continents.

 

I remember how safe I felt sleeping inside my little house in Pardes Hanna. The density of the trees, and the patterns the sun and shade made on the floor.  I can feel the heat that would permeate the walls of my room and the drone of the fan trying its best to keep me cool.

 

On my return to the United States, memories began surfacing, that I could no longer ignore. Palestinians living inside and out of Israel’s borders, living as exiles, their homes being destroyed, land taken, towns and villages leveled to make room for my people and our new towns and villages. A child’s shoe, a doll with no head or arms; broken toys, found while walking the fields with my dogs. Who did I think they belonged to? I didn’t make the connection. I was blind to a nation that still holds the keys to the homes that we now inhabit. How can this be?

 

The work is comprised of old landscape photographs of fields where land mines were once prevalent, videos, which question the validity of land ownership, as well as self-portraits, delving into our self-identities and the many different cultures  now residing in Palestine/Israel.

 

"We're cousins in blood and brothers by fate ... Only dialogue can help us overcome our differences."         

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       - British Imam Abdul-Jalil Sajid