Newman Huo

A JOINT contemporary art exhibition by the British-based Palestinian artist Bashir Makhoul and British artist Gordon Hon will run at Shenzhen Art Museum through Nov. 17.

The exhibition presents more than 20 photographic works, entitled “Return in Conflicts,” by Makhoul, head of the Winchester School of Art at the University of Southampton, as well as three video works, entitled “Ruin,” by Hon, an artist and writer at the same school.

Innovative in format and highly challenging in content, Makhoul’s photographic works address issues of pressing contemporary relevance, and specifically the contentious idea of return in relation to Israeli and Palestinian politics and culture.

In 2004, Makhoul researched a collection of archive photographs of Palestine during the period of the British occupation from 1920 to 1948, and made a selection of images of key locations, such as Jerusalem, Haifa and Akka.

Since then, Makhoul has taken new digital photographs of the same locations in modern Israel.

Makhoul’s works have combined the archive photographs with their equivalent recent digital images.

Processed through appropriate software, pairs of images are presented together under lenticular glazing, which reveals each image in turn as the viewer’s position shifts.

Moreover, the new photographs have been digitally manipulated to restore a memory of the state documented in the old ones.

In some cases, presentation of multiple copies of the same composite panels further complicate the dynamic possibilities of the work.

Makhoul’s works have addressed the contentious and pressing contemporary issue of return, in relation to Israeli and Palestinian politics and culture.

The works seek to highlight the layered nature of social and political meaning and assumption implicit in photographic documentation.

Old and new images occupy the same frame, to be seen individually only from one point of view, a powerful metaphor for conflicting fixed perceptions in a fraught geopolitical reality.

Interestingly, Makhoul’s works on display also include a group of his most recent photographic works of China, where Makhoul has traveled widely over the past several years.

Flag imagery and arabesque graphics reminiscent of his much earlier paintings have also crept into the microlens mix.

Born in Palestine in 1963, Makhoul moved to Britain to study fine arts in 1988. Since then, he has been involved in developing and supervising arts-related research projects.

An expert in contemporary Palestinian art, Makhoul has lectured and exhibited widely in Europe and the Middle East.