Palestinian artist Raeda Saadeh’s installations, performances and photographs reflect on how womanhood intersects with sociopolitical currents and cultural trends. Her work draws from her experiences as a Palestinian woman affected both by the Israeli occupation and by Arab religious and sociocultural norms.

In Vacuum, Saadeh can be seen vacuuming the barren desert hills of Palestine, working her way from the distance towards the still camera. The unnerving sound of the vacuum cleaner intermingles with the blowing winds. In situating this mundane domestic task within an absurd context, Saadeh emphasises our inane preoccupation with tedious tasks that distract from systemic failures. The work, in a sense, confronts the Zionist slogan, ‘A land without a people for a people without a land’: just as it is futile to ‘clean’ a mountain of all the dust and rocks that form the essence of its composition, it is unfeasible to erase the memory of a people from its homeland. Filmed between Jericho and the Dead Sea, Saadeh’s Sisyphean video, commissioned for Sharjah Biennial 8 (2007), references the ceaseless effort and work that goes into day-to-day survival in Palestine and the seemingly endless struggle for liberation.