Recall, Reflect, Return
2018 - Khalil Skakini Cultural Centre
Ramallah, Palestine
Recall, Reflect, Return is a durational performance presented at the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center. the artist holds a large fish in her arms for the duration of one hour, carrying its weight until her body can no longer endure it and finally collapses. The performance uses the physical act of holding as a form of memory, mourning and resistance.
The fish becomes both burden and symbol. It refers to Christian iconography, where the fish is connected to Christ, faith, sacrifice and spiritual endurance. At the same time, the image of the artist holding the fish evokes the figure of Maria holding the body of Christ: a body carried with love, grief and pain, a body that must not be dropped despite the unbearable weight. Aboud’s gesture becomes an act of devotion and suffering, where the body tries to remain strong even as it is pushed beyond its limits.
The performance also carries a political burden. As a Palestinian woman living under Israeli occupation, Aboud’s body becomes a site where personal pain and collective trauma meet. The fish is not only an object being held; it becomes a symbol of inherited suffering, displacement, political violence and the pressure placed on women’s bodies to carry histories of loss, survival and resistance.
Through the structure of the title, Recall, Reflect, Return, the performance moves through three emotional and political states. To recall is to bring trauma back into the present, refusing to erase or forget it. To reflect is to stay with the pain, to examine how it lives inside the body and memory. To return is not simply to come back to the same place, but to return transformed — wounded, aware and stronger.
The collapse at the end of the performance is not a moment of defeat. It marks the limit of the body, but also reveals its power. By carrying the fish until collapse, Aboud exposes the violence of burden itself: the burden of faith, history, occupation, gender and survival. The work becomes a ritual of endurance, grief and return, connecting Christian symbolism with Palestinian political reality and the resilience of the female body
