Gil & Moti, b. Israel, 1968 and 1971; work in the NetherlandsSelf Portrait as Camels in a Je

Gil & Moti, b. Israel, 1968 and 1971; work in the Netherlands

Self Portrait as Camels in a Jewish Settlement
Netherlands? (2017)
Oil on canvas

Self Portrait with Jewish and Palestinian Dogs
Netherlands? (2017)
Oil on canvas, flat screen, HD video in loop
[Source]

In Israel, where a vast majority of its Jewish population still denies its colonialist status, the multidisciplinary artist duo Gil & Moti stand out. Exasperated by the decades-long conflict that has literally placed walls between Palestinian and Jewish communities, the pair decided to relinquish their Israeli nationality in 2012 and acquire Dutch citizenship. This has allowed them to work side by side with Palestinians in the West Bank—an act that is a criminal offence for those holding Israeli citizenship.  

It was 2014 when the duo first entered Palestine to carry out art projects. Gil & Moti spent two years shuttling between Rotterdam and the West Bank, “performing” as volunteers. The artists helped both Israelis and Palestinians build houses on both sides of the security barrier encircling the West Bank that Israel began building in 2002…

In the main exhibition room, most outstanding was Self Portrait as Camels in a Jewish Settlement (2017), a tongue-in-cheek canvas where the artists play with anthropocentrism in the genre of self-portraits. In this painting, the artists portray themselves as defiantly grinning camels. Here, there are no checkpoints or fences or walls, which would be indicative of the conflict zone and construct the notions of “us” and “them.” The camels roam freely and eat whatever they want, even chewing on bits they tore off a house in a Jewish settlement—just like those the artists had helped build…

This predicament of the Palestinians is astutely conveyed in the show’s climatic mixed-media piece Self Portrait with Jewish and Palestinian Dogs (2017), where the sunglasses in the artists’ self-portrait are cut out to reveal HD videos on loop. The embedded screen on the left shows dogs struggling to find their way out of an entrapment in the upper deck of a building. Despite their predicament, the stranded dogs radiate friendliness. Another is seen on the right screen guarding a house in a boundless land, its barks reverberating antagonistically across the exhibition room. The artists said that those acquainted with the Palestinians’ plight would immediately be able to identify which is “Palestinian” and which is “Israeli.”