b. 1983; Nicosia, Cyprus / b. 1983; Boston, USA
Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme are a Palestinian artist duo who have worked together for nearly two decades across sound, moving image, text, installation, and performance. Their work confronts colonialism and explores everyday forms of anticolonial resistance and collective memory. They have been developing the long-term project May Amnesia Never Kiss Us on the Mouth (2022–), co-commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Dia Art Foundation, combining sound, video, performance, and installation to explore colonialism, diaspora, collective memory, and resistance.
The project remains a central thread running through the artists’ practice and continues to expand. Until We Became Fire and Fire Us (2023–), the central work in this exhibition, was created as an extension of May Amnesia Never Kiss Us on the Mouth. It was first presented at Sharjah Biennial 15 in 2023 and later expanded into a new form through a commission by Fondazione In Between Art Film during the 2024 Venice Biennale.
Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom (2025–), a recent project by Abbas and Abou-Rahme, was co-commissioned by Nottingham Contemporary, The Bell / Brown Arts Institute at Brown University, Kunstinstituut Melly, and MACBA (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona). Drawing on the voices and testimonies of former Palestinian prisoners, the project explores the possibilities of resistance and collective imagination that persist under conditions of imprisonment and oppression through song, poetry, writing, and sound.
