UNRWA

Overview

Throughout his career, Marwan Rechmaoui has focused on mapping urban spaces, but in these works he concentrates on Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

The series UNRWA, grows out of a project initiated by the Arab Resource Collective, an NGO working within the Palestinian camps, to create a 'virtual Palestine' by linking the various communities living in five refugee camps around Lebanon: Shatila, Rashidiyeh, Nahr el Bared, Shabriha and Ain el Helwi. The group asked camp residents to map their local surroundings.

The results give a powerful sense of the camps’ day-to-day reality, while also reflecting personal interests: children drew their friends’ houses, flags and their school; mothers depicted pharmacies, dentists, grocery shops and hospitals; teenage girls portrayed social clubs and schools; while boys drew Internet cafes and video-game centers.

Rechmaoui took these maps and reproduced them in concrete, rice and sugar bags, and corrugated metal – all materials that are hard to come by in the camps.


2013

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 11