This piece was produced during the ArtBnB residency programme at HaMiffal, Jerusalem (2017). The artists participating in the residency were tasked with creating a work in response to experiences and encounters within100m radius of the building. I was interested by the multiple layers of history and overlapping realities in Jerusalem, much of which is immediately present in that location. HaMiffal, a former Arab house, then a school, abandoned and then a squat, sits just beyond the walls of the old city, just a few meters away from the former Jordanian border and the 'seam'. The building is now used as a cultural centre, but its various layers of history, and its overlapping inhabitation and uses can be seen etched on its walls.

Multiple layers and multiple narratives are part of the fabric of Jerusalem. Stories are embedded within cracked and peeling walls; half exposed, half hidden, half overwritten. I was interested in how I could use the act of drawing and erasing as a metaphorical tool, and the process of making collage to create a new and imagined map. I wanted to take a sideways look at a landscape that embodies so many overlapping ideologies, histories and subjectivities, whilst fully knowing that as a visitor I could never truly understand the complexity of.

I began by making frottage drawings of various walls and surfaces in the area, starting with the walls in HaMiffal, and working outwards to various walls, and textures in the neighbourhood including the headstones of Arab graves in the Mamilla Cemetery, many of which had already reportedly been removed for the construction of the Museum of Tolerance.

I took the drawings back to the studio, where I erased what I had drawn, leaving only the most prominent marks behind. I then cut out along the most significant lines and shapes that were left in the drawings, and re-arranged them into what appears to be a surreal territory seen from the air. A lunar landscape with the traces of previous inhabitation, absurd borders that don't lead anywhere, enclaves, gaps and lines. The map also contains cuttings from drawings made during a workshop I led during the residency.