Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme.
It’s not customary that an artistic project begins with a postscript, but when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it turned the world upside down.
Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s newest work, an ongoing multimedia project co-commissioned by the Dia Art Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art, was not exempt from this topsy-turviness. In fact, it was especially susceptible to it.
“We began writing in February about the constant mourning, loss, and grief in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and that general area, even though our work always tries to resonate in a broader way,” Abou-Rahme said in a phone interview. “When the pandemic happened and there was this immense global scale of loss and mourning, obviously the text started to take on a completely different significance.”