Doaa Bsis
“Father and I” expresses a delicate and fragile form of peace — a peace born from the body, from the earth, and from the complex relationships that shape identity. Within the nostalgic landscape of home, facing the living mound of soil, a performative ritual unfolds, creating a moment where internal boundaries soften: my father passes earth into my hands, and I pass it into the cart that has accompanied our home since my childhood. This circular movement embodies the cycles of life and death, of roots and flow, of memory gently etched into being. The encounter is almost spiritual — a ritual of deep consent: to receive what is given, to pass it onward, and to find compassion within the delicate spaces between generations. Within the tension created by the social boundaries I grew up within, and amidst the resistance and pain embedded there, something opens in this shared movement. From within the boundary itself, expansion emerges: a new path of acceptance, understanding, and softness — toward the earth, toward society, toward identity, toward vulnerability and trauma, and toward myself within it all.
The peace expressed here is not external or political; it is inner, spiritual peace, born from the ability to hold simultaneously both closeness and distance from home. If a miracle brought peace tomorrow morning: A circular human gesture that chooses gentleness; an action connecting body and earth, past and present, closeness and distance; a mutual consent to carry and hold each other.
Doaa Bsis (b. 1997) is a multidisciplinary artist living in the small village of Daliyat al-Carmel in Israel. Working with drawing, earth-based materials, performance, and video, she explores the relationships between body, land, memory, and identity, while researching boundaries and the possibilities of movement within constrained conditions. She presents her work in exhibitions and art platforms across Israel and around the world.
„Father and I“, video work