Born: Beit Jala, 1975
BFA, Art Department, Bezalel

For decades, I, the Palestinian, am being deprived of my homeland and portrayed in a very negative and wrong way.
 I, the Palestinian, am a human being first before being a cause. The human identity for me, the Palestinian, precedes the national identity. I, the Palestinian, am a human being who loves and hates, enjoys the scene of spring and marries…. Actually, today, the options that I and the rest of the Palestinian people have are narrowed; we have only two options: either to live or to live.
But, where can I, the Palestinian, Live??? How does my homeland look like??? How do I, the Palestinian, feel in my own homeland???
Homeland for me is an open space, a peaceful place, birds’ singings, childhood memories, youth-hood naughtiness and intimate present. My homeland is very beautiful, full of colors: green, yellow, blue and brown. Homeland cannot be divided by zones, separated by walls and alienated by check points… It cannot be turned to grey…
I, the Palestinian, don’t feel much that I’m in my homeland; I feel that I’m in a big prison existing in my home-land. It feels as if I live in exile … the borders are too sketchy between the notions of homeland and exile. Homeland and exile are two vague matters. When one is at home, he doesn’t glorify it and doesn’t feel its importance and coziness, but when one is deprived of home it turns into a passionate love and a yearning dream, as if it is the ultimate purpose of the entire journey. I, the Palestinian, have started a journey, navigating in my own land searching for my homeland. But, it seems that the way home is more beautiful than home because the dream is still more beautiful and serene from reality that this dream unveils. Yet, if I, the Palestinian will keep on believing, one day the dream that I wish will come true. Meanwhile, I, the Palestinian should not surrender; I should keep on working sincerely. One day, we, the Palestinians, shall become what we desire. We, the Palestinians shall reach what we wish…. 
In this work, I, the Palestinian, invite the visitor to come into the installation, stand inside the projection room and meditate in the fragmented details that I provide for him/her. These details are fragments from the daily life of myself, a normal Palestinian citizen in Bethlehem; they include images and sounds, they reflect the time and the homeland: early morning, noon time, evening, late night, going to work, enjoying a holiday, crossing a check point, praying and dreaming… 
In addition to activating the senses of sight and hearing, I encourage the visitor to contemplate in the echo of my Homeland, and allow him/herself to be touched.
Faten Nastas Mitwasi, homage to Mahmoud Darwish.