On the plus side, the Syrians think we are great craic…

The Irish News reports on a new exhibition at the MAC Belfast by Khaled Barakeh, a Syrian multidisciplinary conceptual artist, activist, and cultural director based in Berlin. A ‘multidisciplinary conceptual artist’ is the coolest job title I have ever heard.

Anyhoo, as Sophie Clarke reports:

IN 1992 Maurice Harron’s iconic public sculpture, Hands Across the Divide, was erected in Derry. The work sees two figures extending out the hand of friendship but not quite managing to meet, raising questions around what it would take to bring the hands together… and what sits in the gap between them?

Now, more than 30 years later, conceptual artist Khaled Barakeh is aiming to answer those questions through his exhibition, The Shake, which is currently showing at The MAC in Belfast.
“The first time I came to Northern Ireland I thought I’d landed in Derry but then someone said, ‘No you’re in Londonderry’, and I didn’t know or really understand what they meant,” Khaled recalls.

“I was really shocked by the duality of literally everything, like schools, churches, taxi firms – you name it. You’d talk to someone they’d tell you one thing and then you’d talk to someone else and they’d tell you something completely different and this sparked my interest.”

The Shake reimagines Harron’s original work, focusing on the hands of the monument’s two figures, particularly the gap between them: cast in bronze, frozen in an unfinished reconciliation, almost meeting but never genuinely joining.

“When I saw Hands Across the Divide, I felt like it was a perfect depiction of Northern Ireland.

“What I wanted to do first was to push the two figures together and make them shake hands.

“But then I was talking to people who didn’t identify with either side and I felt the space between represented them more, so I thought it would be better to focus on making the invisible visible by looking at the gap between the two hands instead.”

This gap, filled with traumas and emotional memories fuelled by historical and political differences, resonated deeply with Khaled who is originally from Syria – where the conflict and sectarianism is ongoing.

“There’s a different level of connection you have with a place when you go through a similar experience,” he explains.

“If I talk about my trauma or about Syria I don’t have to explain the history from the beginning because people here connect to it.

However, since the project’s initial inception in 2013 Khaled has developed a deep affinity for the north.

“I’ve just fallen in love with it. The place and the people are such great craic – as you say – which is a concept that doesn’t exist anywhere else,” he laughs.

Ah that’s nice.

The exhibition is free to view at the MAC Belfast, and it runs until the 20th Of October.

I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.