Hanan Abu Hussein’s solo exhibition is presented as close as possible to her family, to her mother, and to the place where she was born — Umm al-Fahm. In that same city, roads were blocked not long ago during demonstrations by members of the Arab community, together with a small number of Jews, protesting violence within Arab society and the failure of the police to act effectively.

Women stood out prominently in these demonstrations, many of them older women, who chose to take to the streets and make their protest clearly heard against the violence that harms both their sons and their sisters — violence that sometimes ends in a one-sided and irreversible way.

The exhibition presents the third chapter in a trilogy of exhibitions shown over the past year at the Givat Haviva Art Gallery, dealing with women’s protest against the rule, power, and authority of male society — in Jewish society, in Arab society, and across the world.

The artists presented in this trilogy, led by Abu Hussein, make visible the fact that this is still the condition of women in the 2020s.

It is not over; it has not ended. In many places, and in particularly severe ways, concepts of property and honor still dominate, and various patriarchal structures still persist. Hanan Abu Hussein addresses the murder of women and murder in general, violence in Israeli society and in Arab society, and male violence.

At the same time, she also speaks about femininity, about herself, and about every woman’s right to do as she wishes.

The exhibition includes installation works and video art in the gallery space. The sense of the body and the performative experience are powerfully present throughout.

Inside the gallery space, at the heart of the Givat Haviva Shared Art Center at the entrance to Wadi Ara, Abu Hussein constructs a charged material world: concrete bras that have frozen, stretched stockings, threads, blankets, woven pencils, and sharpened knives. Through these materials, she examines the relationships between the body, boundaries, pain, and feminine identity.