im/mobility
(تقييد) الحركة

At a checkpoint, one waits. Endless lines, fenced in by little more than retractable nylon straps drawn from one movable pole to another—in other words, arbitrarily, according to power. The body begins to ache; sweat beads on the back of the neck. A specific kind of fear festers here. Borders are sites of physical and psychological trauma. Routine humiliations, unpredictable closures and delays, military intimidation, and the constant possibility of refusal; the checkpoint is where the state’s geopolitical power is felt directly on the flesh. Its very architecture produces the narrative of the security threat it claims to control. 

The emotions fostered by checkpoints and other access restrictions are spatial, historical, and collective, determining how bodies move and navigate the world. In the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel’s extensive system of gated settlements, military checkpoints, permits, walls, fences, bypass roads, high-tech surveillance, biometric screening, and virtual and economic restrictions, operates as a vast cartographic apparatus. It carves up the land with blunt force, mapping the uneven distribution of im/mobility.

Yet the boundaries of the settler-colonial regime are constantly contested and perforated by indigenous agency and ingenuity. The works and designs on display here speak to the varied ways in which Palestinian mobility is reclaimed through craft, storytelling, and collective organizing. Documentation of border abuses ensures that the violence of containment remains visible; acts of making and imagining, meanwhile, open passages for solidarity and resistance. 

Together, these practices contribute to agile and resilient networks of movement. They remind us that mobility is not only the freedom to move through space, but also the capacity to narrate, connect, create, and refuse the limits imposed upon a body.

• Further reading:
• www.un.org
• www.ochaopt.org
  gaza.forensic-architecture.org
• www.accessnow.org
• www.machsomwatch.org
  gis.unocha.org

Practical

2 October — December 2026
Im/mobility, 13 Designs, 925 Movement Obstacles
📍 DDfP Street Gallery, Place du Samedi 13, Brussels 🇧🇪
Opening Friday 2 October
4—6 pm Poetry reading with Sulaiman Salen
6–8 pm Reception & pop-up shop

• Video-interviews: Shereen Allan and Khaled Fakhoury, by Moayad Najjar
• Curatorial team: Ibrahim Muhtadi (conceptualisation), Moayad Najjar (interviews), Sulaiman Saleh (activation), Luke Shirock (text), Lydia Tegatoglou (conceptualisation), Annelys de Vet (coordination), Qusai Zeit (scenography)