Arab Spring lands at Venice Art Biennale
Arab Spring lands at Venice Art Biennale
Emily Jacir is a Palestinian artist. She was born in 1970 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where she spent her childhood. She has attended the high school in Italy. She divides her time between New York and Ramallah.
Jacir works in a variety of media including film, photography, installation, performance, video, writing and sound. She has exhibited extensively throughout the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East since 1994, holding solo exhibitions in places including New York, Los Angeles, Ramallah, Beirut, London and Linz.
Jacir on 17 October 2007 she won the Golden Lion for artists under 40 at the 52nd Venice Biennale. She has been regularly invited to the Venice Biennale and this year she participates to the Venice international art exhibition in a pavilion significantly called The Future of a Promise. It is the largest Pan-Arab show of contemporary art at the 54th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia. From Tunisia all the way to Saudi Arabia, this landmark exhibition brings together more than twenty-five recent works and commissions by some of the foremost artists from the Arab world.
Presenting important works that range from installation, performance and photography, to video, sculpture and painting, The Future of a Promise includes together with Emily Jacir, artists like Ziad Abillama (Lebanon), Manal Al- Dowayan (Saudi Arabia), Ahmed Alsoudani (Iraq), Ziad Antar (Lebanon), Ayman Baalbaki (Lebanon), Lara Baladi (Egypt/Lebanon), Fayçal Baghriche (Algeria), Yto Barrada (Morocco), Taysir Batniji (Palestine), Abdelkader Benchamma (France/Algeria), Ayman Yossri Daydban (Palestine/Jordan), Mounir Fatmi (Morocco), Abdulnasser Gharem (Saudi Arabia), Mona Hatoum (Lebanon), Raafat Ishak (Egypt), Yazan Khalili (Palestine), Ahmed Mater (Saudi Arabia), and Driss Ouadahi (Algeria), as well as three Abraaj Capital Art Prize Winners, Jananne Al-Ani (Iraq), Kader Attia (Algeria), and Nadia Kaabi-Linke (Tunisia).
The exhibition is being curated by Lina Lazaar. The Future of a Promise examines the way in which an idea is made incarnate in a formal, visual context and how a promise opens up a horizon of future possibilities, be they aesthetic, political, historical, social or critical. With the events currently unfolding in the Middle East, the question of the future and the promise inherent within culture has assumed an even more acute degree of pertinence. It is with this in mind that the exhibition enquires into the promise of visual culture in an age that has become increasingly disaffected with politics as a means of social engagement. Whilst the artists included in The Future of a Promise are not representative of a movement as such, they do seek to engage with a singular issue in the Middle East today: who gets to represent the present-day realities and the horizons to which they aspire?
“Through the artworks selected, I wanted to investigate how artists from this diverse, fragmented region have responded to the often contradictory promises that have defined our history,” says curator Lina Lazaar. “I am incredibly proud and honoured to be putting together this exhibition in 2011, at such critical times for the Arab world, and I very much hope to create the rightful platform for these voices to be heard.”
ANF met Emily Jacir at the opening of the Pavilion.
* You presented here one older work of yours, Embrace, which is still very relevant to the Pavilion and the current events in the Arab world.
Yes. This is an older work, but like you said, it fits well with the theme of the Pavilion and the aspirations of this part of the world. I think an important aspect about this work that gets often overlooked is how personal it is. How intimate it is to me as an artist and as a woman. The diameter is the length of my body, a small but revealing detail. And when the looker come close to the work it starts moving which is also a reflection of something quite private.
Embrace is a circular, motorised sculpture fabricated to look like an empty luggage conveyor system found in airports. It remains perfectly still and quiet, but when a viewer comes near the sculpture their presence activates the work; it turns on and starts moving. The work symbolises amongst many things waiting and the etymology of the word "embrace".
* What did you think when did you here about Tahir Square?
That day when Tahir square was happening I can't even describe in words the joy that overwhelmed me. Incredible. In my life time I saw nothing like that in the Arab world. But I think now we have a lot of work to do. We are just at the beginning of a huge work. And I think as a Palestinian is a more complicated relation because we have been resisting for so long and we are still in a worse situation than ever. It is different from the other countries. It makes it more difficult.
* What about the possibility of a dialogue, do you see it happening in a near future? Can artists help this process?
In terms of the Palestinian context, the people who were in the forefront of this dialogue up until now are completely irrelevant to me. This is again artists are speaking to each other in a completely different way and nobody is really interested in listening to artists. Although yes, I think globally artists could help the process of dialogue and recognizion.
* You are once again at the Biennale and this time in a Pavilion of Arab artists. What are your feelings ?
It feels fantastic to be here with other Arab artists. When I think of my region I think of Mediterranean and so much is coming out from there. So yes I am excited and I think much more is to come.
* And yet the so called "West" keeps having this fear of 'the other'.
Yes, you are right. This black and white idea. This idea that there is an "us" and there is a "them" is for me a completely false construct. In some way I feel the world is reducing more and more to this black and white, black and white. I am grey. I am working from a grey space. I don't understand this defining black and white. I can't understand this flatness. This trying to fit everything one is into small boxes...
EMILY JACIR AND HER WORK
On 17 October 2007 Emily Jacir won the 'Leone d'Oro a un artista under 40' - (Golden Lion for artists under 40), - at the 52nd Venice Biennale for "a practice that takes as its subject exile in general and the Palestinian issue in particular. Without recourse to exoticism, the work on display in the central Pavilion at the Giardini establishes and expands a crossover between cinema, archival documentation, narrative and sound".
She was the recipient of the 2007 Prince Claus Award, an annual prize from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, Hague, which described Jacir as "an exceptionally talented artist whose works seriously engage the implications of conflict."
She is the winner of the 2008 Hugo Boss Prize by the Solomon R.Guggenheim Foundation. The Jury noted that she won the award for her "rigorous conceptual practice—comprising photography, video, performance, and installation-based work—bears witness to a culture torn by war and displacement. As a member of the Palestinian diaspora, she comments on issues of mobility (or the lack thereof), border crises, and historical amnesia through projects that unearth individual narratives and collective experience
In "Material for a Film (2005–ongoing)" the displacement is total, as Jacir’s own identity is substituted for that of her subject, Wael Zuaiter, a Palestinian intellectual living in Rome who was assassinated in 1972 by Israeli agents, having been mistakenly identified as one of those responsible for the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. The installation gathers together photographs, books, music, letters, interviews, telegrams, copies of the Italian magazine Rivoluzione Palestinese to which Zuaiter contributed, even a clip from a Pink Panther film in which he had a small part, to flesh out a life no longer there.
In 2009, Jacir participated in the Venice Biennale in the Palestinian Pavilion. She created a site-specific public project to take place in Venice during the Biennale. The Venice City Authorities shut down Jacir's project and refused to allow it to take place. "Stazione"(2008 - 2009) is then the unrealised intervention on the number 1 vaporetto (water bus) line in Venice: a main transport route along the Grand Canal beginning at Lido winding its way to Piazzale Roma, ferrying audiences from one Biennale exhibition to another. Jacir meant to insert Arabic text supplementing the existing Italian names at vaporetti stops and thus making the route bilingual. In the artist’s explanation, the work references the numerous Arab influences and exchanges in the history of Venice, its architecture, manufacturing, shipping, and of course in the process of these activities, language - that Arabic words too have filtered into the Venetian dialect - ‘divan’, ‘damasco’, ‘gabella’, amongst others.
Jacir works in a variety of media including film, photography, installation, performance, video, writing and sound. She has exhibited extensively throughout the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East since 1994, holding solo exhibitions in places including New York, Los Angeles, Ramallah, Beirut, London and Linz.
Jacir on 17 October 2007 she won the Golden Lion for artists under 40 at the 52nd Venice Biennale. She has been regularly invited to the Venice Biennale and this year she participates to the Venice international art exhibition in a pavilion significantly called The Future of a Promise. It is the largest Pan-Arab show of contemporary art at the 54th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia. From Tunisia all the way to Saudi Arabia, this landmark exhibition brings together more than twenty-five recent works and commissions by some of the foremost artists from the Arab world.
Presenting important works that range from installation, performance and photography, to video, sculpture and painting, The Future of a Promise includes together with Emily Jacir, artists like Ziad Abillama (Lebanon), Manal Al- Dowayan (Saudi Arabia), Ahmed Alsoudani (Iraq), Ziad Antar (Lebanon), Ayman Baalbaki (Lebanon), Lara Baladi (Egypt/Lebanon), Fayçal Baghriche (Algeria), Yto Barrada (Morocco), Taysir Batniji (Palestine), Abdelkader Benchamma (France/Algeria), Ayman Yossri Daydban (Palestine/Jordan), Mounir Fatmi (Morocco), Abdulnasser Gharem (Saudi Arabia), Mona Hatoum (Lebanon), Raafat Ishak (Egypt), Yazan Khalili (Palestine), Ahmed Mater (Saudi Arabia), and Driss Ouadahi (Algeria), as well as three Abraaj Capital Art Prize Winners, Jananne Al-Ani (Iraq), Kader Attia (Algeria), and Nadia Kaabi-Linke (Tunisia).
The exhibition is being curated by Lina Lazaar. The Future of a Promise examines the way in which an idea is made incarnate in a formal, visual context and how a promise opens up a horizon of future possibilities, be they aesthetic, political, historical, social or critical. With the events currently unfolding in the Middle East, the question of the future and the promise inherent within culture has assumed an even more acute degree of pertinence. It is with this in mind that the exhibition enquires into the promise of visual culture in an age that has become increasingly disaffected with politics as a means of social engagement. Whilst the artists included in The Future of a Promise are not representative of a movement as such, they do seek to engage with a singular issue in the Middle East today: who gets to represent the present-day realities and the horizons to which they aspire?
“Through the artworks selected, I wanted to investigate how artists from this diverse, fragmented region have responded to the often contradictory promises that have defined our history,” says curator Lina Lazaar. “I am incredibly proud and honoured to be putting together this exhibition in 2011, at such critical times for the Arab world, and I very much hope to create the rightful platform for these voices to be heard.”
ANF met Emily Jacir at the opening of the Pavilion.
* You presented here one older work of yours, Embrace, which is still very relevant to the Pavilion and the current events in the Arab world.
Yes. This is an older work, but like you said, it fits well with the theme of the Pavilion and the aspirations of this part of the world. I think an important aspect about this work that gets often overlooked is how personal it is. How intimate it is to me as an artist and as a woman. The diameter is the length of my body, a small but revealing detail. And when the looker come close to the work it starts moving which is also a reflection of something quite private.
Embrace is a circular, motorised sculpture fabricated to look like an empty luggage conveyor system found in airports. It remains perfectly still and quiet, but when a viewer comes near the sculpture their presence activates the work; it turns on and starts moving. The work symbolises amongst many things waiting and the etymology of the word "embrace".
* What did you think when did you here about Tahir Square?
That day when Tahir square was happening I can't even describe in words the joy that overwhelmed me. Incredible. In my life time I saw nothing like that in the Arab world. But I think now we have a lot of work to do. We are just at the beginning of a huge work. And I think as a Palestinian is a more complicated relation because we have been resisting for so long and we are still in a worse situation than ever. It is different from the other countries. It makes it more difficult.
* What about the possibility of a dialogue, do you see it happening in a near future? Can artists help this process?
In terms of the Palestinian context, the people who were in the forefront of this dialogue up until now are completely irrelevant to me. This is again artists are speaking to each other in a completely different way and nobody is really interested in listening to artists. Although yes, I think globally artists could help the process of dialogue and recognizion.
* You are once again at the Biennale and this time in a Pavilion of Arab artists. What are your feelings ?
It feels fantastic to be here with other Arab artists. When I think of my region I think of Mediterranean and so much is coming out from there. So yes I am excited and I think much more is to come.
* And yet the so called "West" keeps having this fear of 'the other'.
Yes, you are right. This black and white idea. This idea that there is an "us" and there is a "them" is for me a completely false construct. In some way I feel the world is reducing more and more to this black and white, black and white. I am grey. I am working from a grey space. I don't understand this defining black and white. I can't understand this flatness. This trying to fit everything one is into small boxes...
EMILY JACIR AND HER WORK
On 17 October 2007 Emily Jacir won the 'Leone d'Oro a un artista under 40' - (Golden Lion for artists under 40), - at the 52nd Venice Biennale for "a practice that takes as its subject exile in general and the Palestinian issue in particular. Without recourse to exoticism, the work on display in the central Pavilion at the Giardini establishes and expands a crossover between cinema, archival documentation, narrative and sound".
She was the recipient of the 2007 Prince Claus Award, an annual prize from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, Hague, which described Jacir as "an exceptionally talented artist whose works seriously engage the implications of conflict."
She is the winner of the 2008 Hugo Boss Prize by the Solomon R.Guggenheim Foundation. The Jury noted that she won the award for her "rigorous conceptual practice—comprising photography, video, performance, and installation-based work—bears witness to a culture torn by war and displacement. As a member of the Palestinian diaspora, she comments on issues of mobility (or the lack thereof), border crises, and historical amnesia through projects that unearth individual narratives and collective experience
In "Material for a Film (2005–ongoing)" the displacement is total, as Jacir’s own identity is substituted for that of her subject, Wael Zuaiter, a Palestinian intellectual living in Rome who was assassinated in 1972 by Israeli agents, having been mistakenly identified as one of those responsible for the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. The installation gathers together photographs, books, music, letters, interviews, telegrams, copies of the Italian magazine Rivoluzione Palestinese to which Zuaiter contributed, even a clip from a Pink Panther film in which he had a small part, to flesh out a life no longer there.
In 2009, Jacir participated in the Venice Biennale in the Palestinian Pavilion. She created a site-specific public project to take place in Venice during the Biennale. The Venice City Authorities shut down Jacir's project and refused to allow it to take place. "Stazione"(2008 - 2009) is then the unrealised intervention on the number 1 vaporetto (water bus) line in Venice: a main transport route along the Grand Canal beginning at Lido winding its way to Piazzale Roma, ferrying audiences from one Biennale exhibition to another. Jacir meant to insert Arabic text supplementing the existing Italian names at vaporetti stops and thus making the route bilingual. In the artist’s explanation, the work references the numerous Arab influences and exchanges in the history of Venice, its architecture, manufacturing, shipping, and of course in the process of these activities, language - that Arabic words too have filtered into the Venetian dialect - ‘divan’, ‘damasco’, ‘gabella’, amongst others.
