But Badwan’s self-imposed confinement has less to do with protesting the inhumane use of solitary confinement in prisons that it does with protesting the surrounding Gaza landscape she lived and continues to live in. The Israel-Gaza conflict left the world outside of her room a chaotic warzone filled with poverty and abject violence, while her 100 square feet lair functioned as a ‘sanctuary’ from outside horrors, that are ultimately difficult for outsiders to comprehend. “It’s very hard to express it in words, you can only understand it if you live in an experience like that,” Badwan tells The Creators Project.
100 Days of Solitude; Code: 8, Nidaa Badwan, 2014
The breaking point for her the artist came when she was assaulted by Hamas officers in 2013 for not wearing standard Islamic garb and for their lack of comprehension as to what an artist was. The beating provoked a traumatic mental shift in Badwan, resulting in an initial two-month period of confinement where she popped pills, was barely capable of eating, and nearly committed suicide. But afterwards, her camera became both her therapeutic and artistic tool, guiding her through mental turmoil and the adversity that surrounded her everywhere.
100 Days of Solitude Installation View, Nidaa Badwan, 2016
During her 20-month isolation, the artist produced a series of photographic self-portraits where she enacted a series of character roles. In one image, Badwan is a simple cook tending to a gas-lit bowl; in another, a painter intently at work; later, a writer in a dark room furiously slapping a typewriter. Just like the utopic and surrealist founding of the city of Macondo in Márquez’s magnum opus, Badwan creates her own world and narrative when the surrounding one is far from ideal. 100 Days of Solitude becomes a story of mental and physical survival.
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