Movement and accessibility in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are severely limited through checkpoints. Palestinians routinely have to cross Israeli military checkpoints to get from one place to another. These checkpoints are humiliating at best and can be deadly. They are an unavoidable aspect of life under occupation and siege. Palestinians often go through an arduous process of obtaining permits to access certain checkpoints and spend hours completing trips that would otherwise take a fraction of the time. Even then, Palestinians are at the mercy of the whims of Israeli military personnel who often brutalize them physically, mentally, and emotionally. These checkpoints include temporary roadblocks, permanent military structures, and apps. In lieu of physical barriers, the Israeli military employs apps where permit holders have to check in and out via the app when they access certain checkpoints. Failure to do so will result in penalties, including permit revocation. Meanwhile, many Palestinians rely on these permits to access their jobs and livelihoods.

This piece reimagines the checkpoint, a site of pain, humiliation, suffering, and death, as a site of resilience. Creating a checkpoint made of ceramic tiles from the Palestinian city of Hebron (al-Khalil) highlights the resilience of Palestinians and the continuation of life and tradition despite major impediments. The beauty and the aesthetics of the tiles juxtapose the horrors of a checkpoint. The fragility of the ceramic styles opposes the concrete and steel structures that typically makeup checkpoints and is a commentary on the ideologically frail nature of these structures.

Checkpoint

Checkpoint