“Castles Built from Sand will Fall” was Ayyam Gallery’s last show of 2016, and it was a fitting end to a year filled with political upheaval and societal temblor. Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar’s title for the exhibition addresses the instability of man-made boundaries between people, and the constant reshuffling of acceptance and rejection in society. Jarrar has made the transition from enforcing sovereign territorial borders to committing to tear them down. He was militarily trained as a bodyguard in the Palestinian Presidential Guard when Yasser Arafat presided over the Palestinian National Authority. In 2002, he was injured during a raid on Arafat’s headquarters by the Israel Defense Forces, which sparked a period of self-reflection. Soon after, his artistic practice emerged.

For this exhibition, Jarrar divided the vast gallery with a diagonal wall that ran through space. The tall structure produced a shadow that shrouded the room in dim light with an overwhelming feeling created by the omnipresent grey partition. This barrier served as a backdrop for Khaled’s Ladder (2016), a replica of a public art piece created during his February trip to the United States with art group, Culturunners. At that time, the US Presidential race was in its early stages, escalating anti-immigrant dialogue. Donald J. Trump first mentioned plans to tighten deportation policy and build a wall along the US-Mexico border in June 2015; both of these talking points became cornerstones of his presidential campaign, and still fuel an increasingly open display of racial discrimination. The infamous international border wall extends past the shoreline and into the Pacific Ocean, demonstrating the depth of fear and learned xenophobia in parts of both countries’ populations. On his trip, Jarrar visited this border in a journey documented in an eight-minute video of the same title that was included on the other side of his wall in Ayyam Gallery. During his time at the US-Mexico divide, he detached a small portion of the metal barrier, which was used to create a monument that would bring people together, not force them apart. Consistent with his practice—deconstructing small portions of the wall that sits in close proximity to his current residence of Ramallah in Palestine—he upcycled and reconstituted this collected metal pylon to fashion a message of hope. The version of Khaled’s Ladder presented in the exhibition a replica, positioned at a slant, its tip several feet away from the wall but not leaning against it, giving the impression of an unstable placement. The gap signifies that humanity is close to bridging the divide but there is something holding us back; we may still have a long way to go before boundaries dissolve and humanity’s tensions subside.