Open LABitat Ra’fat Ali
December 17 | 17.00 – 20.00 hrs.
With drinks&bites
Since the end of November, four artists have joined the LABitat trajectory: Aisha Hachem, Ra’fat Ali, An Ye Zhi de Jong, and Jurjen Galema. The upcoming months they will work at NP3 | RE:Search:Gallery, experimenting and creating new works. They regularly show their process in Open LABitats, the first one will be on December 17th.
Within LABitat Ra’fat Ali has been evolving his filmmaking methodology by rethinking narrative construction, experimenting with a hybrid visual language, and exploring diverse modes of presentation. Imagine an alternative reality where, each time you look in a mirror, your reflection slowly fades until it disappears completely. Would you still recognize yourself once your reflection on the mirror is gone?
In a comparable situation, he found himself unable to see his reflection after moving to the Netherlands. It seemed as though, each time he passed by a shop window, a rain puddle, or a friend’s eye in his hometown, his reflection faded a little more and remained there—until he could no longer find it here.
This experience shapes his artistic practice, which navigates hybrid identity through the lenses of land and language. He examines the confusion and fragmentation that arise when he is away from his city and his native language, Arabic. In this project, he questions the essence of film in the same way he questions the essence of identity. By exposing the film itself to processes similar to those that form a hybrid identity, he allows confusion, layering, and instability to become inherent parts of the work—mirroring the lived experience of hybridity.
LABitat is NP3’s development programme that aims at fostering artistic research and experimentation. The name LABitat merges “LAB” (laboratory) and “habitat” (living environment), reflecting what NP3 offers: an environment where artists can experiment, research and present, to develop their practice in a supportive artistic environmen