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Keeley Haftner / 35 Sentences on Palestine (billboard project)

Keeley Haftner 35 Sentences on Palestine (billboard project)

Keeley Haftner / 35 Sentences on Palestine (billboard project)
September 20 – November 1, 2025
PAVED Arts, 424 20th St. W. Saskatoon

Launching during Nuit Blanche Saskatoon 2025 on September 20, 6–9 pm.
Artistic reference: Sol LeWitt, Sentences on Conceptual Art, 1969

This work adapts Sol LeWitt’s 1969 ‘Sentences on Conceptual Art’ as a conceptual framework for a series of 35 concise, rigorously sourced statements on Palestine. Each sentence distills verifiable information—from international law, humanitarian organizations, and independent journalism—into declarative form. The language was edited in collaboration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT (ChatGPT-5o), ensuring the phrasing reflects the incontestability of the cited sources.

Presented as a large-scale billboard on 20th Street at PAVED Arts in Saskatoon, Canada, the piece integrates a QR code that links viewers to a full, annotated document (Found here). This extended text elaborates on each statement with contextual detail, citations, and examples, drawing from United Nations resolutions, legal frameworks, reputable media outlets, and NGOs such as Amnesty International.

By reconfiguring LeWitt’s conceptual strategy toward urgent political realities, Haftner underscores the capacity of text-based art to serve both as critique and as documentation. The work situates Palestine within a conceptual art lineage while foregrounding it as “the greatest moral issue of our time.”

Special thanks to Said Abdelhadi of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) Saskatoon.

Keeley Haftner 35 Sentences on Palestine
Keeley Haftner 35 Sentences on Palestine
On the night of the billboard’s launch, Haftner performed live repairs on faded and torn Palestinian flags submitted by local Saskatoon residents—an extension of her ongoing series, ‘Tesselescence (Flag Repair)’.

Artist Bio

Keeley Haftner (b. 1985) is a Saskatchewanian-Canadian artist based in the Netherlands whose multidisciplinary practice centers waste as both material and metaphor. Through intimate acts of transformation, her work challenges extractive systems and prompts new ways of thinking about social and ecological relations. She was born and raised on Treaty 6 territory, on the traditional lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dene, Dakota, Lakota, Nakota, and Métis nations, to whom she and her ancestors are deeply indebted.

Her work has been exhibited internationally across the USA, Canada, and Europe, including at Schering Stiftung Berlin (DE), the Art Institute of Chicago (USA), and the Keramiekmuseum Princessehof (NL). Haftner received her BFA from Mount Allison University (2011) and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2016).

She has received numerous awards and honours, including a longlisting for Canada’s prestigious Sobey Art Award and a shortlist nomination for the Netherlands’ biennial De Kei Prize. Selected residencies include the European Ceramic Workcentre (NL), Vermont Studio Center (USA), ‘Living in the Play: NIDO II (IT)’ by the Poor Farm (USA), and SÍM (IS). She has presented and created work for ‘Transmediale’ (Berlin), ‘Open Engagement’ (Queen’s Museum, NYC), Chicago’s Architecture and Terrain Biennials, and This Art Fair (Amsterdam). Selected publications include ‘The 3D Additivist Cookbook’ and ‘BAKSTEEN | BRICK’ (Kunsthal KAdE). Her work is held in numerous institutional and private collections, including the Ceramic Museum of the Netherlands and The Over Holland Collection. Haftner is a two-time recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Grant and is currently a Professional Artist with Stroom (NL).

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