Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme – The song is the call and the land is calling

Simultaneously on view across Copenhagen Contemporary and the Glyptotek, the exhibition takes a deep dive into collective memory and the power of cultural expressions.

Featuring both video- and sound installations as well as sculptural archival displays, the exhibition undfolds in the slippages between erasures and reappearances, dispossession and resistance, histories of colonialism and attempts at new livelihoods.

The Glyptotek shows a newly commissioned installation by Abbas and Abou-Rahme rooted in the museum’s ancient collection, alongside three works from the artists’ long-term research project And yet my mask is powerful.

At the heart of the exhibition lies a collection of 9,000-year-old neolithic masks excavated in the West Bank and the surrounding areas. For many years, these masks were kept in private collections, hidden from public view until displayed at the Israel Museum in 2014. Visiting the exhibition online through a virtual tour, the artists decided to ‘hack’ the masks by replicating them using 3D-printing technology and subsequently returning the copies to the West Bank as an act of homecoming.

Through poetry and political thinking, the exhibited works suggest an imaginative, or even parallel, time without occupation and colonial legacies.

Living and working between New York City and Ramallah, the artists Basel Abbas (b. Nicosia, Cyprus, 1983) and Ruanne Abou-Rahme (b. Boston, USA, 1983) have collaborated as a duo since 2007.

Abbas and Abou-Rahme’s work is deeply rooted in the history and circumstances of Palestinian lives and culture, shaped by their upbringing in communities across Ramallah, Jerusalem and Galilee. However, their work is always situated beyond the individual as they incorporate multiple perspectives and sources in their research, including field work, oral history, personal encounters and self-authored texts, historical records, archaeological findings, archival research and found footage from the Internet.

They have had institutional solo exhibitions at, among others, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA (2024), Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2023); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2022); Common Guild, Glasgow (2022); Art Institute of Chicago (2021); Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2020); Kunstverein, Hamburg (2018); Art Jameel Project Space Dubai (2017); and Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2015).

Their work has been included in major international biennials such as Sharjah Biennial (2023, 2015); Berlin Biennale (2022); Busan Biennial (2018); Gwangju Biennale and São Paulo Biennial (both 2014); Istanbul Biennial (2013); Liverpool Biennial (2010); and Venice Biennale (2009).