Raafat Hattab | 1987

Raafat Hattab is a multidisciplinary artist. His works explore personal and human existence, touching on the complexities of identity, belonging, and individuality through sound, video, photography, and craft.
The work “1987” is based on an audio recording from 1987, in which the voice of 5-year-old Hattab is heard responding to a kindergarten teacher who is testing his recitation. Hattab attended a kindergarten that belongs to the Collège des Frères de Jaffa – one of the oldest and most prestigious schools in Jaffa, established in 1882. The test, which consists of reciting poems and questions, is conducted at first in French and then switches to Hebrew: two languages that are not the mother tongue of the artist, who is asked to demonstrate his proficiency in both. The audio recording is accompanied by an enlarged photo of the kindergarten class of that year.
As with Hattab’s previous works, “1987” explores a private experience on the backdrop of broader political contexts, and the ways in which Palestinian identity in the public sphere is in constant tension with its environment, comprised of various identities, religions, and languages, especially in a mixed city like Jaffa. A small moment in the artist’s life allows him to expose the tension between his mother tongue and the acquired language; between the individual voice of a child and the educational institution that sets out to define him and instill in him socially, socioeconomically, and even culturally foreign values. The presence of the viewer in front of the work creates a moment of witness bearing, conjuring questions about the significant role of language, which on the one hand polices and defines the Arab identity in Jaffa, and on the other hand expands it and imbues it with cosmopolitan and multicultural layers.