Please Remain Seated While You Are Being Bombed

2009, embroidered life jacket, 70x35 cm

An inflatable emergency life vest covered in cotton fabric, embroidered with the Palestinian keffiyeh pattern and printed with United Nations resolutions concerning Palestine adopted since 1948. Partially obscured by the embroidery, the texts form an archive of international recognition whose promises of rights and protection remain unrealised.

A life vest is designed to preserve a body in danger. Here, that promise of rescue is suspended alongside the accumulated language of international law. The work brings this institutional failure into relation with the conditions imposed upon Palestinians: erasure, dispossession, forced displacement, siege, apartheid, systemic fragmentation, and the normalisation of permanent precarity.

Borrowing the courteous language of a safety announcement, the title turns reassurance into coercion. While violence continues, those subjected to it are instructed to remain seated—calm, silent, and compliant.

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