Oraib Toukan – Palace of the Slave (2017)

Palace of the Slave departs from the open mouth of a sculpted lion and a cub’s gaze. It takes a Hellenic ruin in Jordan to compare pixel to strata and to analyze the mechanics of gazing at the digital representation of ruin, via historical record.

Biography

Oraib Toukan (b. 1977, USA) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Toukan is an artist and scholar affiliated with EUME at the Forum Transregionale Studien. Until 2015 she was head of the Arts Division and Media Studies program, Bard College / Al Quds University, and visiting tutor at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford where she completed her PhD in 2019.  Exhibition venues include Akademie der Künste Berlin, CCA Glasgow, Mori Art Museum, Asia Pacific Triennial, Istanbul Biennale, Heidelberger Kunstverein Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie, Qalandia International, Ural Industrial Biennial, Kyiv Biennial, and Images Festival Toronto. Toukan is also author of Sundry Modernism: Materials for a Study of Palestinian Modernism (Sternberg Press, 2017) among other publications.