The title of this exhibition evokes a notion that originates from the world of the moving image. Key-frames are those that define a scene. They define movement. They set its starting as well as ending point. They are typically the most important ones. They are the ones into which creators put more thought and spend more time carefully developing.
What’s in between, however, is more improvised. Non-Key-Frames are sometimes called in-between-frames or intermediate frames. Frames in between two crucial moments. Defined only through an external reference. Not worthy of a name. An other.
A similar hierarchy can be found in specific modes of historiography, that reduce history to key-moments, key-figures, key-geographies, and key-cultures. In Non-Key-Frame, artist Khaled Jarada refutes such a rigid hierarchy elevating these devalued and mundane moments, places, objects, and figures to become worthy of display, appreciation, and idealization.
Jarada’s works in this exhibition are compositions captured in medias res. His figures appear imbalanced, anxious, and out of place. The in-betweenness in these works is not only temporal. Rather, they are also spatial. Jarada started his exploration into the discomfort of in-betweenness as he himself became out of place in exile.