Printed Matter is pleased to announce Just in Case #2 by Taysir Batniji, a new installation on view in our window and gallery. In this work, Batniji presents a series of images of keys belonging to residents of Gaza who have been forcibly displaced during the continued bombing carried out by Israel in the past year. Each set of keys is connected to a home that has been destroyed, severely damaged, or abandoned as entire neighborhoods continue to be decimated by the attacks. Batniji collected hundreds of these images from individuals, along with their name, the location of their home, its current condition, and the locations to which they have since fled. The motif of the key and ideas of home run throughout Batniji’s work in different forms, contending with aspects of displacement and exile. The installation offers a concrete and moving personalization of unimaginable destruction and loss.
This installation features a selection from the full series of 200 color photographs, Au cas où #2, originally created by Batniji for the 17th Lyon Biennale, September 21, 2024–January 5, 2025. Courtesy of the artist, Sfeir-Semler Gallery (Beirut, Hamburg) & Éric Dupont (Paris).
On the occasion of Just in Case #2, Printed Matter will release a new publication featuring a selection from the series.
Just in Case, Taysir Batniji
68 pages, 8.25 x 9.5 in.
Risograph printed in black-and-white
Singer sewn binding
Edition of 300 copies
Taysir Batniji (b.1966 in Gaza) studied art at Al-Najah University in Nablus, Palestine. In 1994, he was awarded a fellowship to study at the School of Fine Arts of Bourges in France. Since then, he has divided his time between France and Palestine. During this period spent between two countries and two cultures, Batniji has developed a multi-media practice, including drawing, installation, photography, video and performance. Batniji’s work, often tinged with impermanence and fragility, draws its inspiration from his subjective story, but also from current events and history. His methods of approach always distance, divert, stretch, conceptualize or simply play with the initial subject, offering, at the end, poetic and sometimes acrid points of view on reality.
His publications include Disruptions (Loose Joints, 2024); Home Away From Home (Aperture, 2018), in addition to his exhibition catalogs.
Batniji’s work has been shown widely in Europe and the Middle East, including at the Venice Biennale; Jeu de Paume, Paris; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; Kunsthalle Wien, Witte de With, Rotterdam; Rencontres d’Arles; MAC VAL, Paris; and his most recent solo exhibition at the Mathaf in Doha.
About Printed Matter’s Window Installation series:
In 1976 Printed Matter co-founder Lucy Lippard launched a series of installations making use of Printed Matter’s storefront windows as a site for public art, and as platform for deeply political work, aiming to raise consciousness around issues such as gentrification, misogyny, nuclear proliferation, and poverty. Today, Printed Matter’s Window Installation series continues that impulse, making space for artists interested in speaking to contemporary themes of political and social justice as well as providing a space for emerging artists to create installations in association with their publications.
