As part of the GAZA BIENNALE BERLIN PAVILLION we present the piece "Al-Shadidah", which is part of Ola Al Shrif's statue of a slingshot. The sound is incorporated in the augmented reality statue to be found in Hermannplatz, Berlin.
This work has been developed in collaboration with Berlin-based collective Alternative Monument for Germany who designed the sound piece alongside an augmented reality version of Ola's work. The model for Al-Shadidah has been designed by Diaa Assaf (Burj El Barajneh, Lebanon).
The slingshot manifests in public space as a floating, ephemeral structure - its location “to be found,” its trajectory unpredictable - embodying the desire to move beyond fear, beyond walls, beyond imposed limits. The work traces the unsettled geographies of displacement, making absence and hope visible, and transforming survival into collective imagination.
The voice you hear is that of Ola explaining the story of how she came up with the idea of the large slingshot. The artist has also shared this story:
"During the genocide in Gaza, I was forcibly displaced to Rafah. I often went to the archaeological site of Tel Zaarab, where I could see the other side of the world: Egypt separated from me by nothing but a wall. A wall only 200 meters away, yet farther than any dream. I stood before it in disbelief: How can something made of concrete confine so much life? How can a wall become stronger than fear, time, and memory? In those moments, the border exceeded its geographical meaning. It was not merely a barrier, it became a boundary between survival and the possibility of life. There, amid smoke, noise, and terror, I imagined a giant slingshot, a mythical tool large enough to carry people over the wall into safety. I imagined it lifting us beyond its height, hurling our spirits first, then our bodies, into a place where no sounds of rockets, screams, fear or pain could reach us. I said to my friend, half joking with a wounded seriousness: “Let’s build a Slingshot! You throw me first, then someone throws you, and we escape this hell.” This humor was real. It was a way to survive. Because imagination there was not a luxury, it was a necessity. Imagination was our only way to carve a door toward life. Many in Gaza dreamt of crossing. But the wall was not the only obstacle… Above it, stood the price of survival, an enormous sum that took the path out of the hands of the poor and left them beneath the planes, waiting. “Shadidah” is not merely an object. It is a distilled metaphor for the desire to escape the impossible, an attempt to turn despair into action, fear into form, and borders into a point of departure. It stands as a monument to collective imagination: to bodies that could not take flight, to desires that found no passage, and to a stubborn hope still trying to pierce the wall. It is the inheritance of those who dreamed of leaving, but the world did not allow them. Yet despite everything they imagined a way."
Ola Al Shrif (b. in 1996, Gaza, Displaced in Abu Dhabi)
Ola Al Shrif's work has been profoundly impacted by the war in Gaza, during which she lost many of her artworks. Through the years, she has been creating an inventory of feelings based on her experiences of the war. Each feeling is represented by a work, while each work takes surprising material form. When words fail, when international law fails, it seems reality is up for grabs. What happens to the body within the act of resistance? In other words, how does the body experience and enact resistance? During the war, the people of Gaza have been forced to rethink so many basic and fundamental aspects of human life. From the body’s relationship to water, to the unimaginable sound of F-16s overhead and the never-ceasing sound of drones, when one’s relationship to our senses shifts in such a way, the elements of everyday life become monumental moments. Al Shrif’s aesthetic interventions allow us to experience the ‘invisible’ realities hidden in everyday life as if they were as clear as day. There is no such thing as an object outside of the vitality of life. Here, art reaches an essence: what appears to be an everyday object, separate from our body and our life, is transformed into an expression of the vital force of life.
ADfD (Alternative Monument for Germany) seeks forms that connect migration experiences and public memory culture. As a result of the current toxic discourse on migration in Germany, they feel an urgent need to connect and counteract in order to establish a positive frame for migration discourse and counter current xenophobic movements. They approach migration in its potential to weave spaces and memories into an inclusive, collective space. A safe space created and maintained by diverse, evolving communities. Their focus is on queer feminist voices as these have long been silenced.This raises the question: What might a monument commemorating migration look like? In what ways can memories of migration be shared and preserved? What significance can a collective approach have in expanding public space remembrance culture? What role can emerging digital formats play in this context
For more info see website: https://adfd.info/
GAZA BIENNALE BERLIN PAVILLION, November 21 to December 21, 2025
Exhibitions: Flutgraben, Khan Aljanub, AGIT, MBC
Public programs: Galerie & Atelier Arabisk, Casino for Social Medicine, Spore Initiative, and KM28
The Gaza Biennale, an art project rooted in displacement, scatters like seeds around the world to create new hybrids. Through repetition and reproduction, artworks survive the destruction of a genocidal war machine and reappear by virtue of partnerships in different parts of the world. Transcending territory, the Gaza Biennale expands through a human topography that cannot possibly be besieged.
Defying genocide, Gazan artists have continued creating, resisting seemingly endless displacements, bombardments, and forced starvation through their art. Initiated in partnership with the Al Risan Art Museum (Forbidden Museum) in the West Bank, the Gaza Biennale sends their message out into the world.
Arriving in Berlin on November 21, 2025, the Berlin Pavilion will open across different venues in the city to show the works of over thirty artists. It unfolds with exhibitions at sites including Flutgraben, Agit, and Khan Aljanub, and with programs hosted at Galerie & Atelier Arabisk, Casino for Social Medicine, Spore Initiative, and KM28, as well as around the streets of Berlin.
With a collaboratively curated public program, it invites people of all ages and backgrounds to join in these gatherings to practice listening, healing, and mourning; to share joy and sorrow; and to cultivate a communal strength that will ultimately be the key to dismantling oppressive systems based on fragmentation and extractivism—structural relics that lie at the root of the occupation of Palestine and colonial violence worldwide.
The Berlin Pavilion seeks not to become a static exhibition but an evolving platform that continuously initiates its own actions. Refusing to lament the failure of official infrastructures, the Berlin Pavilion builds a new one: an infrastructure made from and by the community, small in its constituent parts, but endlessly expansive in its unity.
