Red in Tooth, 2020-2023
INstalled at the 13th Sharjah Biennial
This ongoing multimedia installation includes a large scale patchwork painting, reassembled for every space it is shown in, a sound work, and a film all by the same title Red in Tooth. Through Nasser’s subtle but radical language of abstraction; the video work, painting(s) and sound installation come together to attempt to cultivate a necessary discomfort through a renewed trust in the land, its rivers and its more than human inhabitants.
The works trace Al Wazzani River which flows through southern Lebanon across the UN Blue Line. In the series Red in Tooth, a mesh between moving image and material practice underscore a mapping, witnessing, sensing and ethnographic practice through which the governing forces along this territory would unfold. Fabrics are dyed using natural dyes extracted from the river’s ecology, using the river itself to abstract the fabrics, shown alongside a filmwork following the drive towards the Wazzani River. The alterations that are now embedded in the evolving process of the land and are exacted on it by the different outwardly interferences, position the environment in an elsewhere realm, in between opposing spaces, occupied by military surveillance and concrete animosity. It becomes an absent witness, or a witness of absence, around which culminates secrecy.
Dala Nasser - Director
Jad Youssef - Cinematographer and editor
Mhamad Safa - Sound producer and composer
Jawad Al Amine - Guide and trap cam operator
Sabine Saba - Animator
Toni Geitani - Equipment
Marina Tebecherani - Color corrector
Rayyan Abdelkhalek - Translator
Leen Charafeddine - Title designer
Dala Nasser, Red in Tooth, installation view at the 15th Sharjah Biennial 2-6/2023.