Taysir Batniji's “Disruptions”: About home and the destruction of public space

Text by Manuel Beinat

All Images © Taysir Batniji 2024 courtesy Loose Joints

Taysir Batniji (b.1966 in Gaza, Palestine) was trained as a painter at An-Najah National University, Nablus, prior to continuing his studies in France. His work incorporates photography, video, drawing, installation and performance, and has been shown widely in Europe and the Middle East, including at the Venice, Istanbul, Berlin and Lyon Biennales; Centre Pompidou and Jeu de Paume, Paris; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; Kunsthalle Wien, Witte de With, Rotterdam; V&A Museum; London; Rencontres d’Arles; MAC VAL, Paris; and his most recent solo exhibition at the Mathaf in Doha.
Previous publications by Batniji include Home Away From Home (Fondation Hermès and Aperture Foundation, 2018 as part of Immersion, a French-American Photography Commission), and Quelques bribes arrachées au vide qui se creuse (MAC VAL, 2022).

On December 15, 2024, Motaz Azaiza, a Palestinian photojournalist, shared an image on his Instagram profile that captured the remains of Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip near the Egyptian border. The photograph offers a fractured panorama: the sky, brushed by the pale light of dawn, shows delicate pinks and blues. These soft tones, however, stand in stark contrast to the ground below: ash, rubble, destroyed buildings, and abandoned wreckage.

The image serves as a poignant encapsulation of the tragedy the residents of the Gaza Strip have experienced since the fall of 2023.
More than a year has passed since the outbreak of what was once considered a conflict, while in late 2024 there was still debate over whether or not to call it genocide.
Medical bulletins (the last one released before this article was written recorded more than 46,000 victims in 15 months) and visual documentation by journalists like Azaiza provide invaluable insight into the scale of this catastrophe.
But it is important to remember that these numbers were once individuals.
They were people who inhabited the homes that we, as spectators, have seen being bombed for the past fourteen months. It is therefore essential – indeed, imperative – to bring our gaze closer, to strive to ignore, if only momentarily, the cacophony of bombs and bullets, and to remember that Gaza was not always like this.

Works such as Disruptions by Taysir Batniji force the viewer to engage with this proximity. This project consists of a series of screenshots taken during video calls between the Paris-based artist and members of his family in Gaza. These interactions, which took place between April 24, 2015 and June 23, 2017, were interrupted by frequent internet outages.
The resulting screenshots depict fragmented pixels, distorted or partially obscured faces, and unrecognizable environments.
These digital presences animate an uncanny stage.
Both public and private spaces are broken down into pixelated textures, and the virtual space that separates the artist from his family is fragmented.
Disruptions explores the invasion of spaces and constant incursions, alongside their destruction. For Gazans, such experiences are nothing new. Since the occupation of the Palestinian territories, the Israeli military has routinely destroyed public spaces and invaded private ones, both in the Strip and in the West Bank. Notably, Israel prevents the Palestinian telecommunications sector from independently managing its infrastructure and systematically obstructs its development. As a result, telecommunications services in Palestine are of poor quality and excessively expensive.
Even the Internet – when considered a public space – can be invaded and controlled. Batniji’s work appropriates these intrusive, dehumanizing interventions and transforms them into tools that affirm the dignity of a harrowing experience.
The screenshots provide the viewer with visual clues, but little more. Yet the audience knows that these images represent Batniji’s family. Thus, in spite of everything, a connection is forged – a relationship that, like all photographic acts, unites the viewer, the photographer, and the subject.
The artist enables us to do what we have been struggling to do lately: to pay attention, to give the proper time and weight to what we observe and the images we consume.

In doing so, we encounter a reality that is typically only mediated through the narratives of the press. The format of the project – a book – forces us to slow our gaze.
In contrast, the presentation of conflicts in newspapers, on television, and on social networks often overwhelms rather than engages us. Images are consumed rather than examined.
This tendency risks depersonalizing those captured in the frame, reducing them to statistics, terrorists, victims, or mere piles of rubble.
In contrast, Disruptions transcends the typical iconography of contemporary times. While images documenting “what happened” are indispensable, works like Batniji’s that delve deep and invite us into an intensely personal space within the broader context of the Israeli occupation of Gaza are equally vital.
The relentless pace of the media rarely allows for reflection, whereas art can afford to pause.

Where journalists illuminate the darkest corners, Batniji’s work allows entry into a space that is already lit – a devastated, dusty space where one must tread carefully.
It is not a comfortable place. Without projects like Disruptions, however, it might remain unseen. As Batniji himself explains, “…art offers a different temporality, a more considered and detached perspective on events, intervening after the fact. It allows, in a sense, the grounding of real experiences in personal (the artist’s) and then collective (the audience’s) consciousness, operating over the long term of memory”. In contrast to the cacophony of news cycles, Batniji’s project speaks through silence-poignant and disruptive in its depiction of destroyed, disconnected images.
This silence becomes a space -both public and private- where artist, viewer, and subject can meaningfully engage despite the lack of connection.

A final observation on the “silence” of this project: while the images whisper, the work itself must make noise. It must contribute – within the art world and beyond – to sustained attention to events, injustices, and abuses. Despite the ceasefire reached in Doha in mid-January 2025, the Palestinian people are far from safe. We cannot turn our attention elsewhere.
Batniji, incisive in both thought and craft, remarks: “One thing strikes me about this war, and it’s not the first time I’ve felt this way: it’s the response-or lack thereof-of the artistic community to what’s happening in Gaza.
Apart from a few rare artists, curators, and institutions that have taken a clear stance from the beginning – some even sanctioned or punished for their views – the art world, which by its critical nature is often the first to mobilize for similar causes, has been largely silent.”
The book Disruptions was announced as the winner of the Photobook of the Year award by Aperture Foundation at the 2024 Paris Photo Fair. It’s available for purchase on the publisher Loose Joints’ website and in various selected bookstores.
All proceeds will be entirely donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians, NGO dedicated to providing medical assistance in the Palestinian territories.