LOCATION: Outdoor exhibition in one of Akademibokhandeln’s shop windows on Östergatan. MAP
In Just in Case #2, 2024, Palestinian artist Taysir Batniji presents a series of images of keys belonging to residents of Gaza who have been forcibly displaced amid the ongoing Israeli bombardments of recent years.
In this work, the artist has collected images of keys from hundreds of individuals. Accompanying each image is a set of personal details: the owner’s name, the location of their former home, its current condition, and their place of displacement.
Through this accumulation of fragments, the work forms a tangible and deeply human register of loss and forced displacement. The key—recurring throughout Batniji’s practice—functions both as a material trace of what has been left behind and as a fragile emblem of return, memory, and enduring attachment to place.
Born in Gaza in 1966, Batniji divides his time between France and Palestine. His practice, often marked by impermanence and fragility, draws on personal experience as well as contemporary political realities and histories. Across his work, he consistently distances, reframes, and reconfigures his subject matter, offering a poetic yet incisive reflection on lived experience.
Batniji has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the Venice, Istanbul, Berlin, and Lyon Biennials, as well as presentations at the Centre Pompidou and Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Rencontres d’Arles, Aperture Foundation in New York, Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, Kunsthalle Wien, Witte de With in Rotterdam, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
