"History is written by the victor" is often attributed to Winston Churchill. My research began with a strong curiosity of how the old and highly advanced city of Jaffa, Palestine was stripped of all remains of its culture and heritage. The tool for such was the Nakba of 1948, which was not only an act of elimination but an erasure of all existence and remains of a life. Thus, I comprehended that I would have to seek beyond Western media to discover its history. Through a multidisciplinary performance, Unveiling the Paradox seeks new ways of uncovering truths that have been purposefully eliminated.

I embedded Walter Benjamin’s methods of reading history against the grain, seeking out fragments, traces, and hidden meanings of those archives that challenge dominant interpretations in my research approach. Therefore, I will be focusing on material from pre-1948, briefly after, and the present day to draw the juxtapositions and intersections between destruction and birth. I will combine three different forms of representations and angles to deploy a spatial construction of Jaffa. The use of poems, literature, and oral testimonies establishes empathy by imagining Jaffa through a lens of longing.

Unveiling the Paradox questions the ways we consume and interpret media, particularly in the context of power dynamics, and prompts us to consider our role as citizens of the Western world. It highlights the intersectional form of erasure as it unfolds, juxtaposing the celebration of the birth of a state with the simultaneous erasure of another, through the lens of media.