MAEN HAMMAD

’LANDING is a collaborative look at the purposeful escape that skateboarding provides to a handful of Palestinian skaters, myself included. This purposeful escape is a radical form of resistance to a headspace of violence, situated in the layers of Israeli domination in Palestine. Woven throughout are tales of my own family’s experience of displacement, diaspora, and partial return. When I moved back to Palestine in 2014, after living in the US for nineteen years, I brought my skateboard because I knew I would be a stranger. I needed the kid in me to remind myself that all is well while I tried to find home. Skating leads us into a parallel world, where we can participate in our surroundings. This participation is an interpretive dance with the built environment; a tool to assemble a community; and most importantly, a centering on the imagination. This project serves as a reminder for this pocket of freedom as we all try to find our landing.Throughout the project are also photos made by the core group of skaters, taken on disposable cameras. I simply asked them to photograph the world around them.’