The hidden codes of the songs in the Palestinian struggle
Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom (2025-2026) is an immersive multimedia installation that takes as its point of departure the long history of Palestinian dispossession and incarceration from the Nakba of 1948 to the present. It draws on Abbas and Abou-Rahme’s research into the experiences of imprisoned Palestinians, and how their spirits and political struggle have endured under the harsh conditions of incarceration. Through first-hand recordings and testimonies gathered across the occupied West Bank, the installation weaves together the voices of former detainees with poems and texts by scholars and revolutionary thinkers—some of whom have themselves been imprisoned —as well as by the artists, reflecting on confinement, resilience and justice under regimes of occupation and oppression. These voices form a polyphonic, non-linear narrative that speaks not only to the physical and psychological hardships of imprisonment, but also to moments of tenderness, joy and creative resistance. Poetry and song emerge as vital practices through which prisoners reclaim agency, becoming critical modes of survival that sustain inner freedom even under conditions designed to extinguish it. You can listen to the testimony of Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme commenting on the journey they followed to build their work.
Exhibition
“Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom” is the artists’ first exhibition in Spain. It centres on the eponymous audiovisual installation, informed by their most recent research, which explores the resilience of former Palestinian prisoners through song and poetry.
