A Freemason in Jerusalem [2015]
The Freemasons are contentious on their home soil, let alone in a colonial context - in Palestine - and then in a satellite colonial context - Palestinian Freemasons in Kuwait.
In this work, I try and imagine what it must have been like as a Palestinian in Kuwait who is a part of the Freemasons - to whom or what does one pledge allegiance after one has lost their country?
If you peel back the layers of beautiful imagery - gleaming G's (which stand for a secular, all-encompassing God, or the supreme architect of the universe in Freemason jargon), towering columns, stairways to heaven, and all seeing eyes, a complex history and problematic set of cultural appropriations are unveiled. By appropriating ancient Egyptian and Greek symbols and coupling them with an essentially capitalist approach to finance and real estate development, a kind of schizophrenic logic becomes apparent in the Freemason way.
On one hand, I presume there is a sense of pride in being accepted into such a rooted tradition, worthy of being framed in silver and displayed in an office. And on the other hand, I see a kind of irony to this - by silkscreening the same image in blue and yellow I make a nod to pop culture's appropriation of Freemason symbology, voicing my worry that orientalist hegemony is being further propagated in our world today.
