Navigating an exhibition can move us to become untethered from the linear paths of familiar histories. To get lost in the unspecified. To feel unprecedented connections with others. In Dor Guez Munayer’s Not Knowing is a Good Place to Start concrete landscapes and their abstractions do not lose sight of each other, instead maintaining the tension between what is shown and what is not, what traverses intimacies and official narratives, as physical traces disappear into the realm of poetry. It is an exhibition based on journeys, across time, between languages, through mourning, beyond borders, and then returns.
“Not Knowing,” explains Guez, “does not signify ignorance, but rather a recognition of the limitations of what we think we know.” In one of Carlier | Gebauer’s most discreet exhibition spaces in Berlin, Guez interrogates the knowledge systems we have inherited, structured by compasses and cartographies, particularly those that uphold oppressive political power and structures. The tension between what is mapped and what remains unmapped serves as a powerful reminder of the gaps left by history and the enduring need to resist simplistic narratives of nationhood, especially in the wake of ongoing tragedies, such as the genocide in Gaza.
At the heart of the exhibition are circular "anti-maps" devoid of any human-made markers, names, or identifiable features, symbolizing a pre-human world stripped of political significance. These maps disrupt the traditional rectangular grid, evoking a sense of dislocation and resistance to the linear rationalist mapping that has historically served colonial and imperial powers. By removing any fixed direction, Guez forces the viewer to grapple with disorientation, drawing parallels between mapping the earth and the ways histories of violence and occupation are encoded into these representations. This approach builds on Guez’s earlier series Amid Imperial Grids, where he erased human traces – city names, borders, markers of civilization – from early 20th-century topographical maps, rendering them unregulated. These works challenge the political power of maps which were historically used to divide, categorize, and control, and invite us to imagine a world where national boundaries are no longer arbitrary impositions. Guez further connects these abstracted landscapes to themes of belonging and exile, as exemplified by the presence of the plumb bob – an ancient tool symbolizing the human desire to impose structure and order on the natural world, despite the distortions this creates in life and landscapes.
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Orientation comes from where the sun rises – the orient – not magnetic poles. And around these mirroring oracle-like surfaces, orientation becomes an act of contemplating political axes, intersecting the fragility of memory and the material remnants of displacement. Guez, born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian mother and an Arab-Jewish father from Tunisia, interrogates how these intersections can be reimagined and recast through contemporary art. His works emerge from the scars left by migration and exile – traces that linger not only on the body but on the very objects carried through these ruptured biographies. The exhibition revolves around these fragments: archival photographs, objects, maps, plants – each recontextualized to raise questions about visibility, erasure, and the lingering echoes of history.
This lingering materializes in Guez’s ongoing photographic series of refugees’ and immigrants’ suitcases. Here, Guez brings together the intimate stories of his family’s displacement: the exile of his father’s family from Tunisia after the Nazi occupation and the forced migration of his mother’s family during the Nakba 1948 as they sought refuge in the basement of St. George’s Church in Lydda. These suitcases, passed down through generations, carry the physical imprints of these journeys. Guez photographs each suitcase meticulously, capturing the six outer faces before flattening them into a single surface – transforming the volume of these objects into a unified plane. The result is an uncanny presence, an “afterlife” of things. These are not mere vessels for possessions; they are artifacts of displacement, bearing the weight of memory and trauma. In Suitcase No. 2 and Suitcase No. 3, every crease, scuff, and tear tells a story of a journey – both physical and emotional. By collapsing these three-dimensional objects to a singular perspective, Guez invites us to confront the limits of what can be contained, both literally and metaphorically. What is packed into these suitcases? What is left behind? What invisible burdens are carried within the visible marks?
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The sense of impermanence and longing permeates the exhibition, where borders, both literal and figurative, are continually questioned and deconstructed. The exhibition also delves deeper into the political and material layers of Guez’s work through his Khobiza series. Khobiza, a wild plant native to Palestine, becomes a symbol of resilience and survival in its gentle manifestation. Historically used as a bread substitute during times of war and siege, khobiza has sustained generations of Palestinians and Jews during times of scarcity. For Guez’s family, who once again found themselves taking refuge in a church during the recent bombings in Gaza, khobiza has become a lifeline, literally and symbolically. In this series, Guez depicts the plant in varying stages, harvested and scattered across the milky photographic surface, its leaves sinking into or emerging from the paper as if suspended in limbo.
The image plays with notions of visibility and invisibility, as the delicate textures of the plant’s leaves merge with the grain of the paper, evoking a feeling of fragility and impermanence. The political layers of the work stretch beyond the visible. Khobiza is a plant that grows in abandoned fields and urban ruins, a symbol of survival amidst the wreckage of history. The tension between what is made visible in the image and what remains invisible – both in terms of the plant’s historical significance and its role in the artist’s family’s survival – creates a space where the material and the political converge. It is here, at the border of what can be seen and what has been deliberately obscured, that Guez’s work takes on its most generous form: blossoming.
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Last summer, pigeons entered Guez’s studio in Jaffa, building nests in his absence. This seemingly mundane event took on deeper significance when the birds chose to nest on a tall bookshelf, specifically on a biblical dictionary from 1977 written in Hebrew and Aramaic. Guez blurs the line between chance and intervention, offering a moment of quiet reflection with this assemblage now called Nest. The birds, like the artist’s own family, sought refuge in a space filled with layers of history, knowledge, and language. The choice of this book, with its charged cultural and religious connotations, infuses the work with a sense of irony and tenderness. Guez does not interfere with the pigeons’ nesting. Instead, he allows the process to unfold organically, transforming his studio into a site of refuge, not just for himself but also for other creatures seeking safety. The sculpture, rather than being a static object, becomes a living, breathing entity, constantly shaped by the unpredictable forces of nature and life. The act of nesting, with its connotations of home and protection, becomes a metaphor for larger questions of shelter and displacement that run through Guez’s work. It’s a subtle yet profound exploration of how the most ordinary of spaces can sustain the weight of history.
We are held in a space of reflection, yet Guez’s work does not offer straightforward answers or solutions. Instead, it invites us to confront the ambiguity of not knowing enough—about the history of dispossession in Palestine, the legacies of colonialism in the Middle East, or the complex interplay of memory and erasure in the trauma of Jewish people imposed by centuries of persecution, culminating in the violent birth of the State of Israel. The scars, traces, and fragments that fill the gallery are reminders of ongoing struggles for the recognition of suffering—both in Gaza, where lives are continually disrupted, and in other histories of forced migration, occupation, and violence across the world that have been omitted from dominant narratives. These remnants testify to survival and resilience. Perhaps not knowing enough is helpful to those witnessing the pain of others. It is in this disorientation, in the discomfort of confronting what has been silenced or erased, that we begin to see the invisible, hear the voices that have been silenced, and bear witness to histories that are not always our own. Only in this recognition can we reorient ourselves toward a future where these stories are no longer hidden.
Erasure and absence run through the exhibition, with black voids occupying much of the image space, forcing viewers to confront what is unseen or unknowable. These voids echo the uncharted gaps between political and national borders, spaces that resist control and appropriation. In a world where maps historically have been instruments of domination and division – especially in Palestine – the absence of familiar demarcations invites contemplation of the violence of colonialism, and the historical process of replacing identities and cultures with supremacist others, as though precision could solve conflict and exclusion. Quite the opposite, Guez seems to suggest with this exhibition: the disorientation of not knowing the limits between “us” and “them” may offer a place to rest. A place to begin.
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On view until October 26, 2024.
- IMAGE CREDITS
Cover, fig. 3: Dor Guez, Khobiza, 2024, archival inkjet print. Courtesy of the artist and carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid. Image © Dor Guez.
fig. 1: Dor Guez, Amid Imperial Grid (Germany) #3, 2023. Archival Inkjet Print. Courtesy of the artist and carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid. Photo © Andrea Rossetti.
fig. 2: Dor Guez, Suitcase No. 2, 2024. Archival inkjet print. Courtesy of the artist and carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid. Image © Dor Guez.
