"Between Lime and Clay '' takes a close look at different earth materials collected by artists Raghad Saqfalhait and Areej Ashhab over the last year exploring their meanings and uses, moving beyond colonial and extractive capitalist classifications that reduce them to either 'resources' or 'waste.'
Villages in northern Jerusalem, from Kufr Aqab in the east, to Rafat, Qalandiya, Al-Jib, and reaching Qatanna in the west undergo rapid changes caused by their isolation from Jerusalem through settler colonial practices of separation and dispossession. With these shifts, new terraforming practices have emerged: from open pits for construction to piles of aggregate waste resulting from stone quarrying and crushing that dominate the landscape. These processes reveal a diverse array of materials with distinct properties: earth, clay, marl, slurry, limestone, calcite and gravel.
These materials act as geological windows revealing layers of lost practices, scientific classifications, and economic values. The project explores these layers, challenging prevailing narratives and interrogating the colonial and capitalist motives that redefine existing relationships with these materials, revisiting lost narratives and reviving local knowledge and practices around them.
Throughout the project we collectively explored traditional crafts of rural pot making, building of clay storage vessels and bread ovens. We also experimented with ink-making and printing with oxides extracted from earth materials.
In July 2024, we transformed our studio into an exhibition space presenting our year-long research. The exhibition featured archival materials, traditional and new pots and objects made collectively from earth materials throughout the project. A public program accompanied the exhibition, with workshops, talks and food gatherings focused on ink-making with earth materials, clay pot making and taboun bread baking.
This project is supported by A.M. Qattan Foundation as part of “Hirakat” grant 2023, and in partnership with Riwaq Center, Al-Jib Preservation Team and Al-Jib Municipality