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Nida Sinnokrot: ‘Rubber-Coated Rocks, All-Stars 02’

Standing in a line, each almost equally tall, Palestinian-American artist and filmmaker Nida Sinnokrot presents us with ‘Rubber-Coated Rocks, All-Stars 02’. The installation displays an array of 10 rocks, semi-covered by a selection of repurposed rubber from various sport balls.

The work responds to the rubber-coated bullets regularly used by Israeli soldiers as “non-lethal weapons” against Palestinians in the context of “peace keeping” on the borders with the West Bank. This practice resulting in several documented fatal and near-fatal incidents. The act of stone-throwing has become an iconic symbol of Palestinian resistance within the asymmetrical Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The work consists of 9 large and 1 small rock, held by smaller metal stands and placed upon white pedestals, to bring the objects at near eye-level with the viewer. The larger rocks are made up of naturally formed stone as well as bricks and rubble, conjuring images of broken cities. These 9 rocks, half-draped in deflated footballs, basketballs, and volleyballs, could pose a threat due to their size, further emphasising the superficiality of this protective layer. Whilst the smaller rock, perched upon and peaking out of a baseball, returns to us a sense of their ineptitude in the struggle between David and Goliath.

In a detached corner of the gallery, a printed photograph of one of the rocks can be found, reminiscent of the many posters praising prisoners and martyrs that line the walls of the West Bank.

Sinnokrot’s practice draws on the traumas generated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many of his works explore various themes of Israel’s grip on the West Bank, including efforts to urbanise a Bedouin culture through the closure of local business, increase of foreign import and introduction of mortgage schemes and traditional Western bureaucratic systems. His works make use of mass-produced American products playfully inserted into a Palestinian context.

‘Rubber-Coated Rocks, All Stars 02’, exists as his second installation on the theme, his work ‘Rubber-coated Rocks’, consists of a large collection of pebbles, lined up along a wall, coated in yellow and black liquid rubber.

Within Tent’s exhibition ‘’, Sinnokrot’s work is one of few 3-dimensional installations, addressing such a weighted issues as an installation allows for the viewer to come closer to grips with the object, in a way get their ‘head around it’, and understand the conflict as a political construct. This use of humour allows the artist’s intention to become approachable and understandable to a wider audience.

I find that the use of humour when approaching such an issue allows us to empathise further than simply displaying actual images. As we become further desensitised by news coverage and widely spread graphic images of war, we seem to lose sense of the humanity of its victims. In my own work I would like to address similarly weighted subjects with humour.