Created in 2023, in the first moments after the Hamas attacks and the beginning of the Israeli bombardments in Gaza, The Snake Charmer is a shroud for Palestine: a fabric structure bathed by projected light that visitors can enter and be enveloped by.

The footage was captured in the same year on two mosques in Leh, Ladakh; a contested territory in the high Himalayas where Buddhist and Muslim communities have lived side by side for centuries.

The Jama Masjid, built in 1667, exists because a king traded faith for military protection. It is a sacred space born from the calculus of war. The Shia Imambara was filmed during Muharram, when the community gathers to mourn the martyrdom of Husayn. Recently restored, it now serves exclusively as a mosque for women.

Inside, algorithms recombine the captured videos: architecture, light, the call to prayer. The title borrows from Jean-Léon Gérôme's Orientalist painting of 1870. Here, the visitor is surrounded by evidence of Muslim sacred life, not as spectacle but as someone's intimate reality.

The poem that was integrated in the piece’s generative sound composition is Not Just Passing by Heba Abu Nada, a Palestinian writer killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on October 20th, 2023. She was 32 years old.

The Snake Charmer, 2023
generative multimedia installation, mixed media, HD video, 5.1 sound
300 x 400 x 250 cm