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.

Yesterday, a star said
to the little light in my heart,
We are not just transients
passing.

Do not die. Beneath this glow
some wanderers go on
walking.

You were first created out of love,
so carry nothing but love
to those who are trembling.

One day, all gardens sprouted
from our names, from what remained
of hearts yearning.

And since it came of age, this ancient language
has taught us how to heal others
with our longing,

how to be a heavenly scent
to relax their tightening lungs: a welcome sigh,
a gasp of oxygen.

Softly, we pass over wounds,
like purposeful gauze, a hint of relief,
an aspirin.

O little light in me, don’t die,
even if all the galaxies of the world
close in.

O little light in me, say:
Enter my heart in peace.
All of you, come in!

- Heba Abu Nada (1991-2023), Not Just Passing, 2023

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