Taysir Batniji

Just in Case #2 draws on hundreds of accounts from people forced to leave their homes in Gaza, which has been extensively destroyed by Israeli bombardment since October 2023. Through the motif of the key—a recurring element in the artist’s work—the project explores the emotions associated with disappearance and exile.

By combining textual elements (names, dates of successive departures and destruction, current places of residence, numbers of victims) with images of clusters of keys collected from displaced Gazans, Batniji invites viewers to look beyond statistics and encounter the individual human stories these everyday objects carry, evoking both the loss of home and the reality of forced displacement.