Wael Shawky

Al Aqsa Park (2006) is an animated film installation where the Dome of the Rock, the symbolic referring to the Al-Aqsa complex in Jerusalem, is displayed as a fairground carousel. Although the work brings an additional reflection on the intersection of the discourses of political systems and religiosity, the Al-Aqsa Park installation is essentially centered on the idea of controlled entertainment that the experience of riding a carousel, as well as its spectacle, delivers. The carousel, conventionally the center-piece of a fair, circling at a speed to generate weightlessness and ‘freedom’, is actually a machine maneuvered by an operator, according to a tightly controlled schedule.

Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third most important mosque in Islam after al Masjid al-Haram (The Sacred Mosque) in Mecca then Al-Masjid al-Nabawi (The Prophet’s Mosque) in Medina.