Visitors to the Munch Museum in Oslo experience Lawrence Abu Hamdan's latest exhibition through sound before sight, as the faint notes of a saxophone drift from Gallery 10 into the museum's gleaming 10th-floor promenade. The Jordanian artist's politically charged new show, titled "Zifzafa," opened on September 18 and explores how sound functions both as a celebration of life and an instrument of displacement.
The exhibition's title derives from an old Arabic word meaning a fierce wind that shakes and rattles everything in its path. Abu Hamdan's work centers on a forensic audio investigation examining the anticipated impact of 31 wind turbines on the native population in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights, known as Jawlan in Arabic by local residents. The Turner Prize-nominated artist, who has built his reputation as a "private ear" through immersive installations and forensic audio investigations into human rights abuses, was contacted by Al Marsad, the Arab human rights center in Jawlan, in 2023 to simulate the sonic disturbance of the proposed turbines.
The exhibition features three interconnected video works displayed in Gallery 10, an unconventional space with a 28-foot-high ceiling and a slanting wall that mirrors the museum building's signature architectural tilt. The saxophone music emanates from "Wind Ensemble" (2024), a hypnotic single-channel video projection showing Jawlani saxophonist Amr Mdah performing on the balcony of a home that will sit approximately 164 feet from one of the new turbines. The musician appears to be encrusted in diamonds due to the physical effect of the projection onto the amplifier's mesh surface combined with the room's darkness.
Across from "Wind Ensemble," visitors encounter "Tilting at windmills i, ii & iii" (2024), which presents three short, looping CGI animations that visualize the sound pollution destined to hover over Jawlan like rainclouds. However, the exhibition's centerpiece is the 45-minute film "Zifzafa: Livestream Audio Essay" (2025), projected by four devices across the gallery's expansive back wall. This work employs the popular online format of video game walkthroughs as a framework for Abu Hamdan's custom-created game that recreates the buildings, sounds, and planned turbines of occupied Jawlan.
The open-source game, available online, allows anyone to explore the region and experience the sonic impact of the future structures as they drown out cultural life sounds. Some turbines will be positioned as close as 115 feet from homes, effectively rendering these spaces uninhabitable once operational. "Right now, [the game] is the only place where you can turn on the turbines and simulate what it will sound like in the future," Abu Hamdan explained during the exhibition's introduction. "But, in the future, it may be the only place where you can turn them off and remember what life was like before."
The work incorporates two crucial auditory components: noise from comparably sized turbines recorded in Gailsdorf, Germany, by engineer Adam Laschinger, and extensive field recordings in Jawlan captured by local composer and sound artist Busher Kanj Abu Saleh. As players navigate the virtual map, they encounter diverse sounds including a man on megaphones inviting listeners to a wedding, music by flautist and shepherd Ibrahim Zen, and the methodical rhythm of water pumps.
The sound of water particularly impacted Abu Hamdan, though understanding its full significance required time. Because the Israeli state has expropriated access to all water sources, the Jawlani people have constructed an autonomous network of pipes, ponds, reservoirs, and pumps—a small but vital victory against military occupation. "In a way, listening to these sounds isn't just about listening to that environment," he said. "It's about listening to acts of resistance."
Alongside the visual and sonic experience of moving through virtual Jawlan, a live chat box—a staple of video game walkthroughs—serves as a medium for a context-heavy monologue delivered by the user "Earshot_." The chat seamlessly transitions from describing the satisfying sound of famous Jawlani apples landing in baskets to explaining water restrictions and providing background on Energix Renewables, the Israeli energy company constructing the turbines. When the turbines activate, vivid descriptions of the anticipated noise—such as "having a truck pass over your head"—flood the chat.
Abu Hamdan's path to this exhibition began in 2019 when he won the Edvard Munch Art Award. Although the prize included a promised solo show, building construction and the global pandemic delayed plans. The three works collectively offer a powerful sensory introduction to the Jawlani people's ongoing struggle against Israeli military occupation, representing another chapter in a conflict that began with Israel's seizure of two-thirds of their land during the 1967 Six-Day War.
While Energix Renewables claims the turbines will occupy just under one mile of space, Abu Hamdan's research demonstrates their acoustic footprint is nine times larger—roughly a quarter of the land still available to Jawlanis today. For the Jawlani people, these turbines mark the latest development in their prolonged struggle for survival and cultural preservation under occupation.
The exhibition's overtly critical stance toward Israel comes at a particularly sensitive moment, when speaking out against the country's actions in Palestine has led to pulled funding and outright cancellations in the art world. However, the timing aligns with what appears to be an ongoing, if unintentional, thread in the Munch Museum's programming. Last November's Vanessa Baird exhibition "Go Down With Me" partially addressed Palestinian suffering through multiple floor-to-ceiling tapestries depicting war's brutality, and in mid-September, the institution's Munch Award was given to New York-based Palestinian artist Samia Halaby.
Senior Curator Dr. Tominga O'Donnell views the timing of these events as coincidental yet reflective of the institution's broader commitment to artistic freedom of expression. "There is direct censorship and cancellations, obviously, but there's also this internalized form of self-censorship, which is almost even more insidious," she told ARTnews. "As an institution, the only thing we can do is to provide a platform which is as safe as it can be in the current political climate."
While the Zifzafa project has been exhibited in various forms elsewhere, it appears to have found its ideal home in the Munch Museum's unique architectural space. Though Abu Hamdan's sprawling video game occupies the most physical space in the exhibition, the sound of Mdah's saxophone may prove most memorable for visitors. As Abu Hamdan noted about the faint musical notes drifting from the gallery, "[I wanted] to help people understand that there are people whose whole sonic world is shaped by that place. It's an exuberant act of sonic self-determination, and it's also somehow funerary because we know it's going to be lost."
