Green Art Gallery is pleased to present Daga’a (18:53 min, 2015) a video work by Palestinian artist Shadi Habib Allah. The work, which was commissioned for the New Museum Triennial in 2015, has since been shown at Portikus, Frankfurt (2016), Hamburg International Short Film Festival (2016), Courtisane Festival, Ghent, Belgium (2016) and the International Rotterdam Film Festival (2016). This will be the work’s first presentation in the region.

Shadi Habib Allah embarks on an unlikely journey near gunpoint across the heavily militarized Sinai Peninsula in Egypt led by a network of Bedouin smugglers, who navigate an unmapped terrain. The only signposts are the stories they share about the stakes of living, dying, and moving through this mysterious space. Anecdotes transition into directions and allegiances are blurred, as is the state of the Bedouins, who remain unrecognized citizens of this no man’s land.

Their navigation tactics, a formation of discipline of movement and coordination developed by necessity to evade military patrols, mirrors the militarized mentality of the Egyptian army. These desert outliers who quietly continue their lineage with the help of snakes.