Mai Elshaer, What Does it Mean to be watched, 2025
Mai Elshaer, What Does it Mean to be watched, 2025
To be in sight, not in reach.
To have the eyes of the world upon you, and their actions restricted.
To count your breaths in front of cameras, and the world counts your deaths.
To be visible to the world... but immobile.
As if you were a living painting hanging on the wall of oblivion, pointed at when they please.
Then they pass by as if the pain in it were decoration, not a cry for help.
As if you were a scene to be looked at, not a human conscience.
This is Palestine. This is Gaza.
Where the past, the present, and everything in between are repeated!
It is neither what was, nor what will be... It is merely a painful “now” that is repeated over and over again.
As for the dream of the violet?
It is not to be seen.
It is not to be captured in a photograph or described as “how beautiful it is despite the rubble.”
The dream of the violet is to be forgotten...
To live without noise, without hunger, without death.
To grow in soil that is not trampled,
And to be forgotten because it survived.
Not because it disappeared.
This artwork was created as part of Sahab Urgent Grant Programm 2025.
