A R T I S T P R O J E C T
ENCOUNTERS—ONGOING
HiBa KaLaCHE
The series of drawings Encounters—Ongoing stems from chance
meetings on leisurely road trips around the mountains of Lebanon.
The drawings act as markers of my conversations with landowners,
farmers, and people directly working in the fi elds.
The formal particularities of drawing, and specifi cally the use
of ink washes, allows for an approach that is both intuitive and inten-
tional. This approach reproduces the spontaneity of these accidental
or brief exchanges with people who have a vested interest in Lebanese
Land. Each conversation is represented by a simple tree branch or a
fragment of a (fl owering) plant belonging to the site and moment the
encounter took place. These fragments index encounters in which
farmers shared their stories, Erfahrungen, or relationship to the land
and its borders. Excerpts from our exchanges are also handwritten
in Arabic on the picture plane.
In the directness of the creative process, and the abstraction of
the conversations, this project alludes to, and yet blurs, the sectarian
divisions upon which the ownership of land is based, as well as the
present geopolitical context. What I share is the marking of unplanned
encounters through representations of fragmented personal accounts
along specifi c terrains and borders.
© 2019 ARTMargins and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
https://doi.org/10.1162/artm_a_00245
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I am a ‘khenseh’, an illegal. Ja, I can walk freely, go anywhere
and I carry fear
I sleep with my eyes open. once you have crossed and you live
outside your land, there is no rest
the Kounaisseh village is self-sufficient. we carry arms for self-
protection. we are the front face of the ‘Resistance’ and Sayyid
Nasrallah
one of the daughters was so beautiful—a Turkish lieutenant
had his eye on her. my great-grandparents came down from
the highest mountains, the Cedar Mountains
the new maps are wrong and no one dares to speak up. Mein
neighbor took 320 meters of my land and built on it without
my permission
6 what I dislike about farming is that nobody will pay me back my
losses. my three other brothers chose to become car mechanics
7 merchandise piled up and imports stopped. but not the bananas!
bananas come only from our land
8
9
villagers eat, drink and satisfy all their needs from their lands.
without a line, people would slaughter one another
I got attached to the land here in Jwar el Hoz, as much as to my
native land in el Raqqah
10 we have actually been stripped of our rights here, as well as there.
we are waiting silently for ‘el faraj’, for a miracle to happen
11 when roads open between us and our neighbor, all will resolve.
Heute, Saudi Arabia is sending us carrots
12 he had six girls and did not want to give them away to any men
from Tripoli, let alone from Beirut. even if we do not see borders,
we feel them and we live them
13 we only needed to buy red meat from the butcher. when one’s field
stops giving, it feels like one has lost a child
14 he should not have opened his mouth. he should have listened to
the military and given him the pistachios. we visited him once in
Sidnaya prison
15
16
‘Allah’ is great and is on our side. cherry trees are very strong
around here
I do not want to live a separation. the soil here and there is ‘one’;
it is my only consolation and connection to the other side
All images © Hiba Kalache.
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