Mosaicking Tales is the story of a ruined castle and the village it occupies in the Judean Mountains of East Jerusalem. One day the castle is illuminated with a gold crown which functions as an optical device, framing and narrating the stories of the horizontal panoramas in the surrounding field of view.

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At the village’s historic centre sits the ruined Ottoman castle of Al Khatib. Al Khatib’s crown is constructed according to the laws of a geometric system that unites the effectiveness of sight with that of spatial order. The crown reactivates the castle by illuminating it in the landscape, whilst creating an ever changing shadow mosaic upon the stone of Beit Iksa’s historic centre.

 

The line of enquiry relates to the culturally specific practices of oral tradition and mosaic arts; and remains relevant to our practice to date.