Between a River and a Sea - Video Installation

The installation ‘Between a River and a Sea’ developed out of Avi Mograbi's 2012 film, ‘Once I Entered a Garden.’ Like the film, the installation reflects on a dream and its subsequent collapse. At its heart are two business directories which mirror the changing realities of time and place.

The first, Dalil Gedeon, a 1938 business directory of Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, evokes a seemingly utopian vision when viewed from 2026: Muslims, Christians, and Jews listed side by side, without hierarchy or national division. The second, a Gaza business directory of 2023, conveys the opposite—our current dystopian reality. None of the businesses it records no longer exists; what is left is complete devastation. The two datasets are interwoven within a constellation of video screens. Projected documentary scenes feature Ali al-Azhari and Avi Mograbi — a Palestinian and a Jew — who attempt to imagine a shared familial and national existence together.

Upon entering the installation, visitors first meet Ali, Avi and the Dalil Gedeon, the  business directory of 1938 covering Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. This is the gateway to an imaginary world that has disappeared, along with the horizon of an imagined future. Stepping into the black box, four episodes of Ali and Avi create an immersive collage of the history of the Middle East, focusing on Palestine and Lebanon. The story depicts the loss of open borders, the collapse of dreams, the separation of communities and the destruction of Palestine.
In the background, a video of the Dalil lends the space a ghostly presence. The ghosts of the Dalil are juxtaposed with the current and ongoing destruction of the fabric of life in Gaza, as seen in the 2023 Gaza Business Directory.