LAWRENCE ABU HAMDAN – 45th Parallel

We are pleased to share that 45th Parallel (2022), a video work by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, is part of the public program of the 18th Istanbul Biennial, curated by Christine Tohmé, and on view until December 1st.

Filmed at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, a unique municipal site that straddles the border between Canada and the United States, 45th Parallel continually recasts the border as at once powerful yet facile, absurd yet lethal.
Unfolding as a monologue in five acts performed by filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel, the work draws from Hernández vs. Mesa, a judicial case covering the fatal shooting of an unarmed fifteen-year-old Mexican national by a US Border Patrol agent. At the Supreme Court, Mesa’s bullet, which crossed the US–Mexico border, began to implicate missiles fired in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya, suggesting that if this murder could be tried in the US, so too could 91,340 drone strikes.

The work was selected for the New York Film Festival 2022, where it premiered, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2023.