“Landing” is a collaborative look at the purposeful escape that skateboarding provides to a handful of Palestinian skaters, myself included. This purposeful escape is a radical form of resistance to a headspace of violence, situated in the layers of Israeli settler-colonial domination in Palestine. Woven throughout are tales of my own family’s experience of displacement, diaspora, and partial return. When I moved back to Palestine in 2014, after living in the US for nineteen years, I brought my skateboard because I knew I would be a stranger. I needed the kid in me to remind myself that all is well while I tried to find home.

Skating leads us into a parallel world, where we can participate in our surroundings. This participation is an interpretive dance with the built environment; a tool to assemble a community; and most importantly, a centering on the imagination. This project serves as a reminder for this pocket of freedom as we all try to find our landing.

Throughout the project are also photos made by the core group of skaters, taken on disposable cameras. I simply asked them to photograph the world around them. Below is a small sample of the work.

*2020-ongoing*