Meet the Artist Who Spent 20 Months in Self-Imposed Isolation in Gaza

In light of contemporary horror stories like Kalief Browder’s post-solitary confinement suicide and Chelsea Manning’s recent solitary confinement following an unsuccessful suicide attempt, it seems absurd to imagine someone deliberately putting themselves through long-term, confined isolation, yet that is exactly what Gaza artist Nidaa Badwan did for 20 months between late 2013 and 2015. Currently on view at Postmasters Gallery, Badwan’s 100 Days of Solitude, a title that references Gabriel Garcia Márquez's magic realist novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, spent 60 times more than that alone.

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.

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.

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.

100 Days of Solitude will be on view at Postmasters Gallery until October 15th. An in-depth archive of Nidaa Badwan’s project and other works by the artist can be found here.

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