Re-constructing Dasein: The Works of Steve Sabella
Institute for Middle East Understanding
By Charlotte Bank
March 28, 2016
Following Steve Sabella’s path through his projects In Exile (2008), In Transition (2010), Euphoria (2010), Beyond Euphoria (2011), Metamorphosis (2012) and finally Independence (2013), the onlooker has access to a unique view of the psychological struggles the artist faced in his condition of up-rootedness. In each series except Independence, Sabella used a particular collage technique, piecing together fragmented photographic images taken from multiple perspectives. Sabella has likened this meticulous process, the careful re-arranging and twisting of forms, to painting rather than any classical use of photography. In many of these collages it is difficult to discern any clear directions; there seems to be no clear up or down. When drawn into these images, one finds oneself caught in a dizzying, free-floating condition, disturbing at first, but maybe also offering the promise of endless freedom, to be found somewhere, sometime.
In this cycle of works Euphoria might be understood as representing a climax. After foregrounding the destructive aspect of uprootedness in In Exile, Euphoria presents a reflection on the liberating feeling that comes with shedding one’s mental chains. Through the metaphor of uprooted trees, arranged in whirls, Sabella offers a powerful visualization of this short-lived emotional condition. The individual parts of the collage seem to fit effortlessly together, bearing certain resemblances to the work of M.C. Escher, as well as the ornamental principles of classical Islamic art.
Steve Sabella, “My Art Is Not About Palestine! It’s About My Life.”
Palestine Square – The Blog of the Institute for Palestine Studies
By Khelil Bouarrouj
March 6, 2015
Liberation, the act of being free, is the source of the 2010 project Euphoria:
“This is when I broke my bones and changed my skin. Blood was flowing again in my veins; a spark hit me, ignition and a rebirth. This is when the euphoric explosion occurred and which was followed by the sprinkle of stars – I am free. Hence, with Euphoria, the form had to change and shift. Instead of solid windows, I looked for something more organic – trees; a form that gives a feeling of movement, change, and revival. I was uprooting myself.”
The Harrowed Hands of Palestine
By Sarah Irving
Electronic Intifada
November 2, 2015
Later sequences of work such as “In Exile” (2008), “In Transition” (2010), “Euphoria” (2010), and “Sinopia” (2014) document Sabella’s increasing fascination with abstracting his photographs, layering and repeating images to create atmospheric but less immediately readable pieces. Some involve direct and challenging imagery — razor wire and brutal metal shapes — while others have a much more tender, personal feel. The abstractness, though, creates even here a sense of distance, as if a question is being posed. The viewer is also challenged by the complex relationship of aesthetic with content. In abstracting his images, Sabella makes barbed wire and the harsh metal technologies of exclusion and social violence somehow beautiful. Where do aesthetics and ethics meet in such a picture?
PDF
view on Electronic Intifada website
In the Wake of the Poetic
By Najat Rahman
Syracuse University Press
2015
In “Colonization of the Imagination” Steve Sabella argues, following Fanon, Césaire, and others, that colonization is also that of the imagination and of the mind and not just of the physical forms of body and place, which “subjects people to a severe mental and physical paralysis that restricts development and obliterates all notions of personal freedom.” For Sabella, exile becomes one of the ways of attempting to counter colonization and regain freedom, to “re-conquer my imagination, until I reached my states of Euphoria (2010) and Beyond Euphoria (2011).”61 It is in this sense that Palestinian visual art, and other forms of art, have been criti- cally important, politically as well as aesthetically. It becomes incumbent to wrench language, whether poetic or visual, from the hegemony of a tired language about Palestine.
Steve Sabella, “My Art Is Not About Palestine! It’s About My Life.”
Palestine Square – The Blog of the Institute for Palestine Studies
By Khelil Bouarrouj
March 6, 2015
Liberation, the act of being free, is the source of the 2010 project Euphoria. “This is when I broke my bones and changed my skin. Blood was flowing again in my veins; a spark hit me, ignition and a rebirth. This is when the euphoric explosion occurred and which was followed by the sprinkle of stars – I am free. Hence, with Euphoria, the form had to change and shift. Instead of solid windows, I looked for something more organic – trees; a form that gives a feeling of movement, change, and revival. I was uprooting myself.”
In Conversation with Steve Sabella
By Madeline Yale Preston
Independence Exhibition Catalogue, Meem Gallery in Dubai 2014
Madeline Yale Preston: Several of your series’ titles – In Exile, Metamorphosis, Euphoria, Beyond Euphoria, to name a few – suggest states of being that are interconnected in sum. One interpretation is that these ‘states’ are autobiographical, referring to your own evolutionary psychological framework, largely in response to living in occupied Jerusalem for the majority of your life. The title Independence – also a state of being – is a leading one. What is it independence from?
Steve Sabella: In my catalogue essay for the Archaeology of the Future exhibition in Verona (October 2014), I ask whether we can break ourselves free from our image. In my work I explore decoding fixed systems that are constantly at work to entrap people in bordered spaces. Over time this investigation led me to see the bigger picture. Each series I have created began with a search of how to explore and exit the state of mind I was living in. I transformed this state into a visual dilemma or a question, which, once solved, would lead me to a new state with a new visual challenge. Looking back at my work, I see that I was unfolding visual palimpsests that explore the multiple layers of my past, and the influence perception had on my ‘reality’. Today my images gain their independence from my narrative. The narrative might still be there, but it will unfold itself in a different way. There are hidden layers in images that change perception all the time. It is time to engage further in the process of looking, where meaning resides only in the mind of the viewer.
Free-Falling Into the Future
By Madeline Yale Preston
Independence Exhibition Catalogue – Meem Gallery, Dubai
2014
Euphoria (2010) may propose an autobiographical remapping of the artist’s relationship to his homeland. Its repetitive, fragmented structures can symbolize a detachment from associative images of border and exile.
view entire catalogue
read more about the exhibition on the Meem Gallery website
Foreword
Independence Exhibition Catalogue
Meem Gallery, Dubai
By Meagan Kelly Horsman
2014
I first encountered Steve Sabella’s art when consigning works for the Bonhams Photographs auction in 2011, the first Photographs auction to take place in the Middle East. I remember seeing his Euphoria (2010) at The Empty Quarter Gallery in Dubai and marveling at the beauty of the work, the high gloss finish from the Diasec mount and the overall feeling of quality that the piece gave. I still recall the buzz in the room when the work came up for sale during the auction, an energy I still note when discussing Sabella’s work.
Steve Sabella – Photography 1997-2014
By Hubertus Von Amelunxen
2014
The three images that make up Sabella’s cycle Euphoria (2010) heighten the intertwining lines and encirclements in the photographic fragments that have been thrown and pushed into ornamental orders. The gaze is ordered by sky views mediated through treetops or branches. These are ramifications that structure the gaze at the sky, the gaze into the distance; likewise they form a promise, a possible opening… What we recognize in the works of Euphoria is not the clear symmetry of a mathematically traceable pattern, but rather a rhythmic structure that can also have an underlying asymmetrical pattern.
read excerpts, reviews and view photos of the monograph
order on Hatje Cantz website
In Exile / Jerusalem – An Interview with Steve Sabella
Israel & Palästina – Palästinensische Kunst
Deutsch-Israelischen Arbeitskreis für Frieden im Nahen Osten e.V.
By Rainer Zimmer-Winkel
2014
PDF (German)
visit the diAk website
Stages of Transition. Visualizing Exile in the Work of Steve Sabella
Afterimage – Volume 39, Number 6
By Dorothea Schoene
2012
His next series, “Euphoria,” followed immediately; indeed, Sabella began the series just a week after finishing “In Transition.” Ultimately, the aesthetic aspect of each piece became increasingly important.While the title still reveals a personal impulse and a reflection of emotional state, the examination of beauty and aesthetics has become a more prevalent part of the work… As one of the most prominent contemporary photographers from the Middle East, Sabella has revealed in his work not only his autobiography, but also a symptomatic portrayal of an entire generation of exiled and displaced artists from the region.
… Sabella, in his use of non-Middle Eastern iconography, most certainly fits into this description. However, his self-referential works still retain strong evidence of where he is coming from and what has inspired him.
Portfolio: Steve Sabella
Brennpunkt – Berlin
By Dorothea Schoene
January 2012
PDF (German)
Euphoria
Juliet
By Sara Rossino
November 2011
It is in this state of transition and investigation that the external reality penetrates violently and brings the artist back to his earthly roots. Sabella’s introspective process melts and fuses with the recent events in the Arab world …. Agony and pain seem to be the price for Arabs to pay in order to enable them to start a process of liberation, awakening and rebirth. As an observer, there seems to be common traits between the artist’s condition and the Arab Revolution… The possibilities offered by the current historical events, and the reflection about himself and his constant transformation give birth to Sabella’s last series Beyond Euphoria.
PDF (Italian)
Exodus and Back
Canvas
By Myrna Ayad
2011
It then seems as though Sabella’s In Transition hit the nail right on the head and snowballed into a mental ecstasy. in the same week that he shot images for In Transition, came Euphoria, “like an explosion!” here, the images take on a chromosomal quality; the apparent veins and arteries clearly connect to one another and Sabella’s dna is unmistakably lucid.
Steve Sabella in Conversation with Sara Rossino
The Changing Room Exhibition Catalogue, Curated by Aida Eltorie
By Sara Rossino
2011
This is when I broke my bones and changed my skin. Blood was flowing again in my veins; a spark hit me, ignition and a rebirth. This is when the euphoric explosion occurred and which was followed by the sprinkle of stars – I am free. Hence, with Euphoria, the form had to change and shift. Instead of solid windows, I looked for something more organic – trees; a form that gives a feeling of movement, change, and revival. I was uprooting myself.
Steve Sabella – I am From Jerusalem
Euphoria and Beyond Exhibition Catalogue
The Empty Quarter, Dubai
By Christa Paula
2011
In contrast, the Euphoria triptych is a joyous retinal explosion. Cut and assembled from hundreds of fragments of trees, like those shown In Transition, the resulting photomontages of organic fluidity emanate cathartic relief and a transcendence of the state of ‘mental exile.’ Long years of self-interrogation have given way to a more stable personality, one open to expansion and to the appreciation of beauty and the sublime. It is also relevant that the production period of Sabella’s first post-Euphoria works coincided with the demonstration in Tunisia and Egypt.
Grenzgänge – Beispiele künstlerischen Arbeitens über Exil und Entwurzelung
Springerin
By Charlotte Bank Springerin
2011
PDF (German)
Steve Sabella
Bonhams Auction Catalogue
By Christa Paula
April 13, 2011
Euphoria (2010) heralds a lifting of the state of ‘mental exile’, the realisation that identity is liquid and situational and that choice of context is an option. It is perhaps not surprising that it was created in physical exile. Montaged from hundreds of shots of trees, the resulting image of organic fluidity signifies cathartic relief, emanating a sense of the ecstatic and the sublime. Anthropomorphised shapes dance against the softly pattered background forming ever new aesthetic possibilities in the promise of limitless expansion.
Euphoria and Beyond
Zakharif
By Charlotte Bank
May 13, 2011
Light shines through the branches of trees, caught in floating movements, ephemeral and fragile like the first rays of morning light after a long and dark night. Here, a cautious hope enters Sabella’s universe, a hope that gains in momentum in “Euphoria”, a triptych celebrating the euphoric deliverance from the mental bonds of anxiety in what might be called a “mental heterotopia”. Through the use of a similar technique of multi-angled photomontages as in “In Exile”, each of the three single pieces show a kaleidoscope of up-rooted trees. But their up-rootedness does not make them appear doomed, rather they seem to stretch out their branches, circling around each other in a light-hearted dance.
Steve Sabella: In Exile
Nafas Art Magazine – Universe in Universe
By Charlotte Bank
July 2010
“…These contorted passageways through his own psyche led the artist to the roots of his wounds and gave him an inkling of the possibility of healing. While the destructiveness of being uprooted was at the center of In Exile, Sabella’s newest works move, release and liberation into the foreground. Euphoria (2010) alludes to the blissful feeling of being freed of mental fetters. This feeling – possibly short-lived, as the artist himself concedes – is expressed in playful-seeming, uprooted trees…”