Roee Rosen
The Gaza War Tattoos (2024)
Sketch, courtesy of the artist
Roee Rosen’s photo series depicts emulations of tattoos, painted onto bodies with makeup. They resemble commemorative tattoos, but the events they remember come from the current, devastating chapter in the violent conflict in Palestine and Israel.
Some are open-ended ciphers, figurations of notions such as “witnessing,” “evidence,” and “listening.” Others echo facets of the destruction meted out in Gaza (the bombing of hospitals and schools) and refer to concrete events and places in Arabic, Hebrew, and English.
Rosen’s tattoos reflect upon the contradictions of nationalist and military terminology and their peculiar poetics—adding up to a hybrid and fragmentary “skinscape” that documents Palestine and Israel’s descent into elemental violence.
Roee Rosen (1963, Rehovot, Israel) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and filmmaker. His films, paintings, installations, and books frequently feature invented figures and controversially address taboo zones in 20th-century history as well as contemporary political reality. His works have been shown at the Venice International Film Festival (2010); International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2012); Documenta 14, Kassel and Athens (2017); and the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2018), among others. He lives in Tel Aviv.
Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’24
With the kind support of Artis
Photographs
Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’24
With the kind support of Artis
