Flower on a TV Screen
Mixed-media, prayer beads made of barbed wire, olive pits and rope, 25 cm x 18 cm x 2 cm (10 in x 7 in x 1 po), 2024
As a child, Jarrar visited a neighbor’s house to congratulate him on his release from prison. He noted a set of prayer beads in his hand, which was made of olive pits that were hidden and dried in prison. The prisoners made prayer beads to pass the time that had forgotten them. Palestinian prisoners prevail through creative practices like writing, reading, and sculpture from any material they can scavenge, expressing the infinite seconds in prison where time becomes another prison, shaping their bodies and hands. The barbed wire of Jarrar’s prayer bead is a literal nod to the flowers that political prisoners create behind the ugly prison walls. Flower on a TV Screen echoes the inverse timeline that “flows in the fixity of place,” as stated by Palestinian political prisoner and writer, Walid Daqqa.
The title of this work is based on the concepts Daqqa penned in a letter from prison upon entering his twentieth years of imprisonment. In his letter “On Parallel Time,” written to a friend, Daqqa explores the state of his imprisonment– which culminated with his death in 2024– and the perception of passing time behind bars and the anxiety that accompanies steadfastness and solidity.
Khaled Jarrar is an artist who has lived multiple lives. He studied interior design, worked as a clandestine carpenter in Nazareth and enlisted in intensive military training to end up as Yasser Arafat’s personal bodyguard for 25 years. He made the shift from the military to the arts by entering the field of photography and eventually getting his MFA at the University of Arizona. Jarrar works in a diverse range of mediums to explore and alternate perspectives surrounding identity, disappearance, and memory, unpacking their narrative limitations. His work addresses global issues in symbolic and transmutational ways through performance, film, installation, photography and sculpture.