On Sunday, August 20, The Polygon Gallery, in partnership with Or Gallery and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, presented the West Coast launch of Driving in Palestine, a photo book by artist Rehab Nazzal. This recording is of a conversation on this timely project between Nazzal and artist Jayce Salloum.

Rehab Nazzal is a Palestinian-born multidisciplinary artist based in Montréal. Her work deals with the effects of settler-colonial violence on the bodies and minds of colonized peoples, on the land and on other non-human life. Nazzal’s video, photography and sound works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and internationally. Dr. Nazzal was an assistant professor at Dar Al-Kalima University in Bethlehem and has taught at Simon Fraser University, Western University and Ottawa School of Art. She is a a Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia University, and the recipient of several awards, including the Social Justice Award from Toronto Metropolitan University and the Edmund and Isobel Ryan Visual Arts Award in Photography from the University of Ottawa.

Jayce Salloum’s work exists within and between the personal, quotidian, local, and the trans-national. While he has lived in many locales, Salloum currently resides in Vancouver, Canada. His work engages in an intimate subjectivity and discursive challenge while critically asserting itself in the perception of social manifestations and political realities. He has worked in installation, photography, drawing, performance, text, and video since 1978, as well as curating exhibitions, conducting workshops, and coordinating a vast array of cultural projects.