Ben-Gurion University of the Negev the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Department of Art History and Visual Culture

BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY AND VISUAL CULTURE

Beyond Exile:

Identity and Belonging in the Work of Emily Jacir

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT

OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MASTER OF ARTS DEGREE

Merav Berkeley

Under the Supervision of: Dr. Ruth E. Iskin

August 2012

BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY AND VISUAL CULTURE

Beyond Exile:

Identity and Belonging in the Work of Emily Jacir

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT

OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MASTER OF ARTS DEGREE

Merav Berkeley

Under the supervision of: Dr. Ruth E. Iskin

Signature of student: Date: _____

Signature of supervisor: Date: _____

Signature of chairperson of the committee for graduate studies: Date:______

August 2012

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the work of artist Emily Jacir in the context of post- colonial thought and contemporary theories of migratory, relational and political aesthetics. It examines the reception of the artist and the exhibition rhetoric surrounding her. Using this interdisciplinary model I analyze issues beyond exile, identity and belonging in the artist’s work. It will demonstrate how Jacir succeeds in transcending the local and the personal and touches upon broader complexities of contemporary life. It is argued that beyond questions of nationality and belonging, Jacir explores issues of travel, space, the movement of people, mobility, and restriction of movement. It will highlight central yet under-discussed aspects of the art-work Jacir produced over the first decade of her career, from 1998 up until the censorship of her work at the Venice Biennale of 2009. Since Jacir is most often described as a “Palestinian artist” the first chapter explains and problematizes this, relating to the historiography and contested field of Palestinian art. The second chapter examines how the understanding of Jacir as a Palestinian artist may have affected reception of her work producing a reductive and narrow reading. It suggests instead an alternative, nonessential approach. The third chapter expands on the idea of exile and the centrality of this theme to her work. It demonstrates how Jacir’s exility affords her an insightful state of “in-betweeness,” in response to which she adopts contrasting strategies of displacement and community in her art. The fourth chapter explores Migratory and Relational Aesthetics in Jacir’s practice. In examining Jacir's art and identity, this study will investigate her position within Palestinian art, as a “Palestinian artist” and the artist’s exilic perspective. Interspersed between my discussion of reception and curatorial practice are close readings of the artist’s work. My treatment of these works, the exhibitions and the reception of Jacir’s work has a discursive purpose- to address the shifting landscape of contemporary art in which questions of national identity are being replaced by others pertaining to multi-culturalism and displacement. Altogether these investigations attempt to establish a wider, hitherto under-developed reading of the artist's work.

III

Table of Contents

Introduction and Literature Review 5

Chapter One: Belonging - Emily Jacir and Palestinian Art 12

Chapter Two: Identity - Emily Jacir as Palestinian Artist 32

Chapter Three: Beyond Exile 47

Chapter Four: The Migratory Aesthetics of Emily Jacir 61

Conclusion 83

Virtual Exhibition: The Jacir Palace Show - Return 87

List of Illustrations 98

Bibliography 100

Introduction and Literature Review

Figure 1 Emily Jacir, Change/Exchange, 1998, detail

The Peripatetic Life of Emily Jacir

In the blurb surrounding Emily Jacir, the artist is repeatedly referred to as "living and working between Ramallah and New York."1 This is a reflection of the art world's positioning of

Jacir within a certain political context: as a Palestinian artist working in the West. In fact, it would be more accurate to describe Jacir as living and working between many places, being constantly on the move. That certainly has been the case during the period of the artist's work investigated here: Starting from 1998, when Jacir first appeared on the international art-circuit and culminating in 2009, the year that Jacir’s work was censored at the 53rd Venice Biennale.

Jacir, in her forties at the time of this study, has been moving around all her life: Born to a Christian Palestinian family from Bethlehem, growing up Jacir attended the American School in Saudi Arabia, then high school in Italy, finally completing her further education at universities in the United States. Since then she has been working and exhibiting across the globe. Jacir has been on residencies in Paris, Jerusalem, Cairo, Linz, Texas, New York and Beirut.2 A key figure

1 For example see the blurb about the artist provided by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the artist's gallery Alexander and Bonin in New York and the mention Jacir receives at the recent 54th Venice Biennale. 2 As I write, Jacir currently holds a visiting professorship at Ashkal Alwan University, The Lebanese Association of Plastic Arts in Beirut, Lebanon.

5 in establishing the Ramallah art scene, Jacir has since attracted international acclaim through numerous Biennial’s since 2003; Istanbul 2003, The Whitney Biennial in New York 2004,

Sharjah Biennial 2005, The Sydney Biennial 2006, The Venice Biennial in 2005, 2007 and 2009.

This peripatetic lifestyle has greatly informed Jacir’s work.

The material that exists on the artist is mostly to be found in curatorial texts and academic essays that appear in the catalogues of the group and solo exhibitions she participated in. An examination of these sources, along with the writing of critics from reviews written in response to these exhibitions, reveals the exhibition rhetoric generated around the artist. What these varied sources have in common is an almost consistent viewing of Jacir’s work through the prism of exile, identity and national belonging. The aim of this thesis is not only to expand on this but, more importantly, to transcend these confines, looking beyond these predictable insights.

In 1999 Jacir began to be noticed by the international art world.3 This was thanks to a conceptual, action-based piece she created during a residency in Paris with the Cité

Internationale des Arts the previous year: Change/Exchange (1998) comprised of documentary materials, including 60 photographs and receipts, one shelf and $2.45 in coins.4 The photographs

(frontal shots of the Parisian exchange shops around the city) and receipts, were presented as proof of the repeated exchange by Jacir, of one hundred U.S dollars into French francs and back, until Jacir was left with $2.45 in loose change (coins are not exchangeable). The performance involved sixty exchanges in all (Fig. 1).

Curator Jack Persekian, the founding director of Anadiel Gallery, the Al-Ma'mal

Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem (where Jacir completed a residency in 2002),

3 Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, “Her Dark Materials,” The National, Jul 13, 2008, pp. 8-9. 4 Ibid., p. 8.

6 describes his reaction to this piece upon encountering it for the first time, while flipping through the artist’s portfolio:5

It was not directly related to the Palestinian issue or cause or identity. I thought it went far beyond that. It relates to people all over the world, to the idea of crossing borders, the depreciation of things, how you lose them over time by being transient.6

I would like to test Persekian's observation and join him in seeing what goes “far beyond” the question of the Palestinians in the artist's work. By examining Jacir's art and identity and her so-called exilic perspective, this study will demonstrate how Jacir succeeds in transcending the local and the personal and touches upon broader complexities of modern life. Beyond questions of nationality and belonging, Jacir explores issues of travel, space, the movement of people, mobility, and restriction of movement. Of Change/Exchange the artist has said it was about

“wandering through space and time…”7

The artist herself points to the piece Change/Exchange as a kind of turning point in her career. It was around this time that she started to adopt a more interdisciplinary approach, altogether abandoning the “pretty paintings” she did in her past as an art student majoring in painting. As is common among many contemporary artists, Jacir, dissatisfied with the limitations of painting alone, began to shift between mediums, choosing whatever form and practice best conceptually suited the idea she was trying to express. For that reason too, 1998 seems a fitting place to start a discussion of her work.

For the last two decades discussions of art and cultural representation in the West have been shaped by sociopolitical realities such as post-colonialism and globalization.8 This thesis is

5 The Jerusalem Show opened a 10-day run on July 9th, 2007, showing the work of 27 artists in 17 venues throughout the old city of Jerusalem. 6 Wilson-Goldie, “Dark Materials,” pp. 8-9. 7 Stella Rollig, Genoveva Rückert, eds., Emily Jacir: Belongings, Works 1998-2003, Bozen: Folio, the University of Michigan, 2004, p. 9. 8 Erin Mcnab in her thesis "Passages between Cultures: Exhibition Rhetoric, Cultural Transmission and Contemporaneity in Two Exhibitions of Contemporary Middle Eastern Art," Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, 2008, p. 15.

7 no exception. By now social art history has been firmly established as the standard discursive framework. Since the ‘nineties the importance of feminist and post-colonialist critiques has become firmly established. Combined, these models lead to an examination of cultural representation in the art institution as "ideological."9 The development of post-colonial art-theory was closely informed by larger trends in historical and theoretical discourse. For example, much as Franz Fanon's classic text The Wretched of the Earth provided a base for influential post- colonial scholars such as Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak to develop the field of post- colonial studies further, Fanon's writing from the early ‘sixties was also later to inform the writing of art historian Gannit Ankori and Palestinian artist and writer Kamil Boullata, whose writings I will examine. I must acknowledge these thinkers for articulating ideas and concepts that I will use here. Since this study addresses questions that arise as a result of a focus on Jacir as "Palestinian" artist and "artist in exile," it will be essential to engage in texts that analyze her art in this manner.

This thesis will refer to a variety of sources when examining the reception of the artist’s work. Reception theory traditionally relates to the viewer-artwork dynamic.10 In the context of this study, this includes examining curatorial and critical responses to the artist's work, not just audience reception. Beyond curatorial texts, such as that of Persekian, this will include the writing of venerable cultural theorist Edward W. Said. In 2003 Said contributed a short text on

Jacir, to the literary journal Grand Street.11 It will discuss writing on the artist from the next generation of critics, art historians and theorists active today, such as T. J. Demos, Vali Murtaza,

Kirsty Bell and Adila Laidi-Hanieh.12 In their writing too, one can discern a focus on aspects of exile and fragmented Palestinian identity apparent in her work. For example, the 2003 essay by

9 Ibid. 10 See Robert C. Holub, Reception Theory: a Critical Introduction, New York: Taylor & Francis, 1984. 11 Edward W. Said, "Emily Jacir," Grand Street, No. 72, Detours, Autumn, 2003, p. 106. 12 Of particular interest here is that these writers, although approaching Jacir as “Palestinian” and as “exile,” at least tentatively point towards issues of audience-art-work dynamics in the work of Jacir, as this study will demonstrate.

Demos "Desire in Diaspora: Emily Jacir," analyses relations between art, exile and homeland in her work.13

In a statement given by the Venice Biennale’s International Jury upon announcing Jacir as recipient of the Golden Lion Award in 2007, Jacir's work was described as “a practice that takes as its subject exile in general and the Palestinian issue in particular, without recourse to exoticism.”14 The following year a similar description was given by curator Joan Young at the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, upon Jacir’s winning of the prestigious Hugo

Boss Prize: "Her work serves to highlight the general condition of exile and the negotiation of tenuous borders as she focuses on the mundane details of everyday life as well as momentous historical events…”15 Again and again it seems Jacir’s work is neatly slotted into a category of

Art-About-Exile-By-Exiles, being read specifically within the context of Palestinian art.

The artist's work does indeed “serve to highlight the general condition of exile,” as

Young asserts; yet I contend that it does a lot more than that. It is regrettable that Jacir’s complex oeuvre is often reduced in this manner. In interviews with the artist herself there is a sense that

Jacir indeed finds that the overall reception of her work often overlooks the full scope of her process and art.16 In a recent interview Jacir was asked “What is the biggest misconception people have about you as an artist or your work?” Her response was “That it’s all about exile.”17

13 T. J. Demos, "Desire in Diaspora: Emily Jacir," Art Journal, Vol. 62, Issue 4, Winter 2003, pp. 68-78. 14 Statement given by the Biennale’s International Jury upon announcing Jacir as recipient of the Golden Lion Award in 2007: http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/nafas/articles/2007/emily_jacir, viewed December 20th2010. 15 Joan Young, “The Hugo Boss Prize, Emily Jacir,” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, http://www.guggenheim.org/, 2008, viewed December 20th 2010. 16 For example, Jacir: “Of course this is all linked to larger themes that my practice addresses including movement (both forced and voluntary), repressed historical narratives, resistances, political land divisions, and the logic of the archive. I wouldn’t limit my obsession with transportation to Palestine however!” Adila Laidi-Hanieh, “Destination: Jerusalem Servees, Interview with Emily Jacir,” Jerusalem Quarterly, Issue 40, Winter 2009/10, pp. 59-67. 17 In interview with Caroline Stanley on Flavorpill, Cultural News and Critique, Feb 3, 2009, http://flavorwire.com/9639/exclusive-emily-jacir-talks-about-wael-zuaiter-bushwick-and-her-hopes-for-obama, viewed December 20th 2010.

Beyond Exile

If “it” is not all about exile, what then is it about? Focusing on the prolific first decade or so of Jacir's career, from 1998 up until 2009, this study will attempt to address that which has been overlooked in the understanding of the artist's work during these years. In order to accomplish this, one must first approach and analyze what has been said about Jacir and her work until now. Since Jacir is most often described as a ‘Palestinian artist’, the first chapter will explain and problematize this, looking at what it means to be a Palestinian artist and what is meant by Palestinian Art, in order to see how Jacir fits (or does not) into this category.

The second chapter examines how the categorization of Jacir as a “Palestinian artist” has affected reception of her work. It will examine the identity politics at play there, and open up an non-essentialist approach to defining Jacir as an artist. The third chapter expands on the idea of exile and the centrality of this theme in her work. It looks at how Jacir’s work contributes to, or complicates our understanding of this human condition. It will discuss for example, strategies of displacement that the artist adopts often in response to her exilic perspective. It analyzes how thinkers have grappled with the complexity of exile, from Theodor Adorno to Said and younger writers such as Ihab Saloul.

The fourth chapter will explore Migratory and Relational Aesthetics in Jacir’s practice.

These concepts are helpful in order to establish a wider, hitherto under-developed, reading of

Jacir's work. It will discuss the writing of art-theorist Mieke Bal on the subject of migratory aesthetics. The insights and issues Bal raises are crucial to this study. It will also relate to the writing of curator and critic Nicholas Bourriaud and his Esthétique relationnelle, and touch briefly upon the “Politics of Aesthetics” with the philosophy of Jacques Rancière. Finally, the study will present research on the case of the cancellation of Jacir’s proposed work Statzione in

2009 at the 53rd Venice Biennale. This includes examining the context and circumstances surrounding the case, looking at what has been written in response. It will discuss for example,

Jean Fisher’s informative essay “Voices in the Singular Plural: ‘Palestine c/o Venice’ and the

Intellectual Under Siege” which raises the question of Palestine in the context of the Venice

Biennale.18 In particular, Fisher focuses on the exhibition Venice c/o Palestine in which Jacir was participating, and the problematic work itself. In asking why this peaceful and temporary public intervention was stopped this study hopes to raise questions of a more general character, about the very nature and agenda of the art establishment today.

Conclusion

This thesis will attempt to highlight central yet under-discussed aspects of the art-work

Emily Jacir has produced over the period investigated here. Utilizing the body of writing that exists on the artist, along with applying relevant contemporary-art theories, to support my arguments throughout; this study will attempt to reevaluate this work. The aim is to contribute to a revision in the understanding of this artist and to a deeper appreciation of the complexity of her work. In addition, through a discussion of Jacir’s work, this thesis has a discursive aim - to raise critical questions about the very nature of the art establishment today. It argues for the necessity for a new system based on something other than categorization of artists grounded in a nationalist logic. It will suggest instead that the system needs to take into account factors such as displacement, multiculturalism and a new relational and migratory aesthetic present in the work of Jacir and many contemporary artists active today.

18 Jean Fisher, “Voices in the Singular Plural: ‘Palestine c/o Venice’ and the Intellectual Under Siege,” Third Text, Vol. 23, Issue 6, November, 2009, pp. 789-801.

Chapter One:

Belonging - Emily Jacir and Palestinian Art

Where She Comes From

Artist Emily Jacir was born in 1970 in Bethlehem, or perhaps Riyadh, or was it Amman?

As New York Times journalist Michael Z. Wise pointed out, in a 2009 interview with the artist, her birthplace has variously been given as Bethlehem, Palestine, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Amman,

Jordan, Baghdad, Iraq, as well as Chicago, Memphis and Houston in the United States.19 When asked in this interview “Where were you in fact born?” her answer was an evasive “No comment”. Most commonly, the confusion is over whether the artist was born in Riyadh or

Bethlehem.20 According to a recent publication dedicated to Jacir, she was born in Santiago,

Chile.21 Perhaps because of this confusion many sources simply make no mention of the artist’s birthplace. Significantly this omission appears also in the first monograph dedicated to Jacir, titled Belongings, published in 2004. Jacir's Palestinian ancestry is mentioned in the opening lines of the book; yet in the biography that appears at the back of the book it simply states: “born

1970, lives and works in Ramallah and New York."22 One might suspect that the detail is left unmentioned because her identity as "Palestinian artist" promoted by the media may be undermined if she was born in the United States or South America.

Jacir’s refusal to give a straight answer seems to antagonize some. One reader, of the interview described above, was moved enough to write to the newspaper in response. She wrote:

19 Michael Z. Wise, "Border Crossings between Art and Life," The New York Times, January 30th, 2009, p. AR28. 20 For example Lilly Wei in, “Report from Sydney: Remapping the world,” Art in America, March 2007, p. 64, describes Jacir as having being born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Other sources describe Jacir as having being born in Bethlehem, Palestine/Israel for example: Frances Richard, “Emily Jacir: Alexander and Bonin,” Review, Art Forum, May 2005. Mack, Joshua, "Emily Jacir: Accumulations," Modern Painters, (June 2005), pp. 111-112. 21 Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome and John McBrewster, eds., Emily Jacir, Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Mueller e.K., 2011. 22 Rollig, Belongings, p. 92.

“Why wouldn't Ms. Jacir answer such a harmless question? Her evasion makes me wonder about the truthfulness of any of her answers…”23 The fact that the artist was being reticent is no surprise when one considers her work. Her art often highlights the not-so “harmless" nature of the question "Where do you come from?" Her reluctance to give a specific answer may in fact be in the name of “truthfulness” that the upset reader so demands. Whether her evasion stems from a reluctance to further heighten any confusion pertaining to her fragmented identity, or a desire to perpetuate her Palestinian image, it may be more correct to say that she comes from all of the places Wise listed, irrespective of where she was born. This quickly becomes apparent upon reading about the artist.

As discussed in the Introduction, writers repeatedly make the point that Jacir has lived and worked, or is “based in(-between)” several places. Furthermore, this nomadic lifestyle is typical these days of any artist operating at an international level, as Jacir has during the period that is the focus of this study. The nature of today’s globalized art-world is such that artists show their work all over the world, flying from one biennial and art event to the next, often participating in temporary residencies in cities across the globe. This lifestyle is bound to have an effect on the artist's sense of place and to significantly inform their work.

Despite this multiculturalism at play, writing referring to the artist consistently focuses on

Jacir’s nationality, stating that she is “Palestinian” or “Palestinian-American” for example. Yet something may be gained in looking beyond questions of nationality and origins when attempting to read Jacir’s work. Her persistent investigation into travel, transport, the movement of people and goods and the spaces we inhabit, as well as her investigation into other extra-

Palestinian issues such as translation, the archive, historical narratives at large and so on, is at times eclipsed by the focus on her as artist from Palestine. Perhaps it is for this reason that the artist stubbornly refused to answer the question "Where were you in fact born?"

23 Heidi Levin, “LETTER; Emily Jacir: An Artless Dodge,” The New York Times, query.nytimes.com, February 15th, 2009.

Jacir and Post-colonial Discourse

It would be difficult not to approach the work of Emily Jacir from a social-historical perspective, within the context of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, considering her as an artist who has roots in the East and works in the West, and whose work is unapologetically political. This is not the place to present a history of the vastly complicated Palestinian-Israeli, conflict or dwell on the well-known circumstances of 1967. (That fateful year in Palestinian history, the year of al

Naqsa -the setback- that led Jacir’s parents into reluctant exile and a new life as “guest-workers” in Saudi Arabia). However, upon adopting a more general (post) post-colonial perspective here on Jacir’s work, echoes of the ideas of influential post-colonial cultural critics such as Said,

Spivak and Bhabha, resonate within much of the artist's work. Said famously wrote of

‘Orientalism’ as a ‘scopic tool’ of colonialism, issuing a warning ever since to those who turn their gaze from a position of power in the West, upon the East.24 Understanding that all writing is always highly motivated, thanks to Said, I am wary as I write, of any preconceived notions I may have, and of my so-called ‘Israeli gaze.’

From the writing and ideas of Bhabha I understand the sphere in which Jacir operates as being very much inter-cultural one of negotiation and dialogue, not simply one of struggle and resistance.25 If Bhabha were to address the question of Jacir’s art and the relevance of her nationality to it, I imagine he would say to her: “In another’s country that is also your own, your person divides, and in following the forked path you encounter yourself in a double movement…once as stranger, and then as friend.”26 This quote from Bhabha was of course not directed at Jacir. It is from his 1994 essay “Looking Back, Looking Forward: Notes on

Vernacular Cosmopolitanism.” Yet it is an interestingly fitting reference in relation to Jacir,

24 See Edward W. Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books, 1979. 25 Tamar Hurvitz Livne, "Ahmad Canaan- Sculptures," Ahmad Canaan Sculptures, Omer, Israel: The Open Museum, 2011, p.114. 26 Homi Bhabha, “Looking Back, Looking Forward: Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism,” in The Location of Culture, London, New York: Routledge Classics, (First published by Routledge, 1994,) 2010, pp. viiii-xxv.

04 raising as it does issues of Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism. Bhabha’s contribution to our understanding of identity in a post-colonial world, is his theory of cross-cultural relations that seems to be rooted in the - not so negative- idea of hybridization.27 Edward Said came to a similar conclusion towards the end of his memoir Out of Place in which he concedes that being out of place -not belonging- might in fact be something positive.28 It often seems that Jacir's not- belonging is the greatest source of power to her as an artist. Her being “out of place” has afforded her insights that have in turn provoked some of her most interesting pieces.29 Yet she is consistently pulled into a discourse of art theory and identity grounded in a nation-based identity logic.

There is no doubt that Jacir, as an activist and political artist, explores her own questions of what it means to be Palestinian in exile in her art, identifying strongly with the Palestinian community. It is useful to consider what is meant by “Palestinian Artist,” since this seems to be the most common prefix attached to the name Emily Jacir. Having said this, one must keep in mind the complexity of identity politics that post-colonial studies have illuminated, knowing that such histories of (de)colonization and Diasporas around the world have long since destabilized essentialist notions of homogeneous identity.30

27 Homi Bhabha, “The Question of the Other: Difference, Discrimination and the Post-Colonial Discourse,” in Theory and Criticism, vol. 5, 1994, [Hebrew], pp. 144-157. 28 Edward W. Said, Out of Place, New York, Vintage Books, 2000. 29 In an interview with the artist Stella Rollig asked the artist what her opinion is of Said’s conclusion. Interestingly, the artist gets quite defensive saying she would rather not “talk about it,” as she doesn’t want to be trapped by theory. Her discomfort perhaps reflects her frustration at constantly being pulled into a discourse surrounding exile and Palestinian identity via Said, in Rollig, Belongings, p. 17. 30 Ihab Saloul, “Exilic Narrativity: The Invisibility of Home in Palestinian Exile,” Eds. Sam, M. Durrant and Catherine Lord, Essays in migratory aesthetics: cultural practices between migration and art-making, Rodopi, 2007, pp. 111-128.

The Historiography of Palestinian Art

Until recently very little had been written about Palestinian artists. In mainstream

Western Art-History, which tends to be Eurocentric, Palestinian art has been overlooked.31

American-Israeli art historian Ganit Ankori’s book Palestinian Art published in 2006, provides a good introduction to the subject.32 Ankori’s writing, representing the culmination of almost three decades of research, has paved the way for further investigations in the field, including this thesis.

In the introduction to the book Ankori discusses the lack of available material in her account of her own early experiences of research in the field.33 A handful of Palestinian artists and intellectuals have been attempting to document and record Palestinian art for several decades now. As Ankori clarifies, artists such as Abed Abdi, Isam Bader, Nabil Anani, Ismail Shammout and Kamal Boullata have provided the field with the beginnings of a base for more academic research.34 In the mid-80’s a wave of their texts came out, including the first book on the subject,

Art in Palestine, by the painter Ismail Shammout, which was published in Arabic.35

As is typical of a group of Palestinians, these artists have led unsettled lives, operating both inside Israel and the territories and in exile abroad, at different stages in their careers. As a result, the writing reflects a broad variety of thought and each one focuses on different aspects and key figures within the Palestinian art scene. Some write on artists inside Israel, some on artists working in Gaza and the West Bank, some on modernist trends in Palestinian art and some on traditional imagery. The first article to appear in English on Palestinian art was Kamal

31 For a discussion of why certain women artists are excluded by a white, patriarchal art-history see Fergusen, Russel, et al, eds. Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. New York and Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990. See also seminal essay by Linda Nochlin, “Why have there been no Great Women Artists?” ARTnews, January 1971, pp. 22-39, 67-71. 32 Gannit Ankori, Palestinian Art, London: Reaktion Books, 2006 33 Ibid., “Introduction: Broken Narratives and Dis-Orientalism,” pp. 15-22. 34 Ibid., pp. 15-20. 35 Ismail Shammout, Art in Palestine, Kuwait: Matabi’ al-Qabas, 1989, [in Arabic].

Boullata’s essay “Towards a Revolutionary Arab Art,” in 1970.36 Boullata’s title reveals a political agenda to the writing that is common to these accounts of Palestinian art. Indeed Ankori describes this group of writers as ideologically driven, almost reluctant, historians:

Although many of these artists bemoaned their limited qualifications to engage in scholarly pursuits, and articulated their clear preference to have someone else write about their work, it is the virtual lack of outside interest in the field, coupled with their belief in the vital importance and urgency of their message, that compelled them to undertake the role of writers.37

Art historian Ankori is among a small but growing group of non-Palestinian writers attempting to undertake the task, working over the past few decades to rectify this “virtual lack of outside interest” in the field. A self-declared cultural “hybrid,” Ankori bases her theory on a principle of fragmentation of artistic influence, for which she develops the term Dis- orientalism.38 Reminiscent of Bhabha's ideas of a “Third Space,” Dis-orientalism reflects the dispersal of Palestinian artists in a wide and varied Diaspora. Going back to pre-1948 art from the region of Palestine, Ankori acknowledges the rich history of Palestinian arts and crafts

(Tatreez embroidery especially). She also discusses the tradition of Christian icon painting, and stylistic influences in painting from other cultures, especially Europe. Most writing, including

Ankori's, recognizes that art from the region of Palestine has always had influences coming in from both East and West, as a land that has been invaded, conquered and occupied repeatedly by competing forces, throughout ancient to modern history. Boullata’s book Palestinian Art: From

1850 to the Present published in 2009, also recognizes the hybrid nature of Palestinian art.39 Like

Ankori, Boullata traces the origins of Palestinian art back to Nineteenth-century Eastern

Orthodox paintings and follows it through the diaspora, ironically seeing the emergence of a

36 Kamal Boullata, "Towards a Revolutionary Arab Art," in Naseer Aruri, ed., Palestinian Resistance to Israeli Occupation, Wilmette: Medina University Press International, 1970, pp. 92-106. 37 Ankori, Palestinian Art, p. 16. 38 Ibid., p. 8. 39 Kamal Boullata, Palestinian Art: From 1850 to the Present, London: Saqi, 2008.

07 well-defined nationalist art as only really taking shape after Al Naqba (The Catastrophe) of

1948.40

With the dispersal of so many Palestinians across the globe since 1948 and again in 1967, the influence of foreign cultures on Palestinian art has of course only become more pronounced

(of the original group of 780,000 Palestinian refugees, who left Palestine in 1948, there are now over 4 million dispersed across the globe).41 Furthermore, common to both accounts is the recognition of the heterogeneous nature of Palestinians, including Christians, Muslims, Druze,

Bedouins and Jews. As is typical of many nations, one can detect vast differences between the culture, education and politics of different sections of Palestinian society. The traditional versus more modern and secular Palestinians, the rural and urban communities from cities such as

Jerusalem and Haifa, render impossible any attempt to define an essential Palestinian aesthetic.

Both Ankori and Boullata’s books present themselves in their titles as comprehensive histories of Palestinian art. Of course such a task is impossible. In each case, the writers in fact chose to focus on a select few artists, demonstrating through their careful selections, the heterogeneous and diverse nature and practice of Palestinian art. Considering the scope of the subject matter, this kind of focus is indeed a legitimate approach; yet the youngest generation of

Palestinian artists is not sufficiently discussed in either book.42 In both books significant contemporary Palestinian artists, such as Ashraf Fawarkhry, Tareq al Ghossein, Rula Halawani,

Sandy Hilal, Ahlam Shibley, Vera Tamari, and Sharif Waked are either not discussed in any depth, or completely left out. Jacir appears only in the Postscript of Palestinian Art, where

Ankori makes a comment, citing T.J Demos' essay "Desire in Diaspora: Emily Jacir," writing:

"Most recently Emily Jacir's conceptual pieces try to heal the wounds suffered by her

40 Ibid., p. 17. 41 John Menick, “Undiminished Returns: The Work of Emily Jacir 1998-2002,” in Rollig, Belongings, pp. 21-45. 42 Ankori goes into the contemporary art practice of a select few – most notably the conceptual and performance- based practice of artists Mona Hatoum, Khalil Rabah, Raedah Saadeh, Jasser Abu-Rabia, Jumana Emil Aboud and Rana Bishara. Discussing work spanning predominately from the mid-90’s to early 2000’s.

08 grandparents' generation."43 In Boullata's book contemporary young artists active internationally are briefly listed, acknowledged by the writer in the introduction but after that, mostly ignored.44

Boullata mentions Jacir in brief in connection to her winning the Golden Lion Award at the 2007

Venice Biennale, and the book includes one illustration of her work (an installation view of her

2005-ongoing project Material for a Film).45

Boullata's Palestinian Art: From 1850 to the Present which dedicates two entire chapters to his own modernist, abstract paintings, has indeed been criticized for the under-representation of prominent contemporary Palestinian artists, and especially women artists.46 For example, the highly successful work of International Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum only receives coverage up to 1994. Despite the fact that the artist has significantly continued to develop, and, as one review pointed out, has had around thirty solo exhibitions since then.47 Jacir too, a prominent contemporary artist, exhibiting internationally as Boullata was writing, was not discussed any further in the book. Neither of these books explored Jacir’s work in any depth or tackled her

Palestinian/global identity, topics which my thesis focuses on.

The purpose in relaying these accounts here, is to demonstrate how the field of the history of Palestinian art is still a very much contested area of study and remains under- developed, in a fledgling state. Yet the growing field creates a sense of identity for Palestinian artists. For example, such rhetoric positions Jacir within the discourse of post-Naqba,

"disorientalist" Palestinian art that Ankori has articulated. At the same time, most art critics, historians and curators, who use the term “Palestinian artist” so easily, would be hard pressed if asked to describe exactly what is meant by “Palestinian artist.” Why not a more vague “Middle-

Eastern” or more accurately “International” or Multi-cultural” artist? The main challenge, in

43 Ankori, Palestinian Art, p. 217. 44 Boullata, Palestinian Art, p. 37. 45 Ibid., pp. 37-38. 46 An example of one such review is Don J. Con, “Protest and Resist: The Art of War, Far from the Battlefield,” in Art Asia Pacific, May/Jun2009, Issue 63, 2009, pp. 160-161. 47 Ibid., p. 161.

09 articulating a history of Palestinian Art, understandably, is in avoiding “forcibly grafting nationalist roots onto the art of a displaced people.”48

Dominant Themes within Palestinian Art: Where She Goes

In Ankori’s discussion of the development of Palestinian art since the dispersal of the

Palestinians in the pivotal year of 1948, concentrating on figurative painting, she recognizes three dominant themes. The first is the depiction and celebration of idyllic, pastoral, village life in Palestine. Such as Ibrahim Ghannam’s undated Harvest paintings. In exile Ghannam painted vivid scenes from memory, of rural life. Ghassaan Kanafani’s classic short story The Land of Sad

Oranges is another typical example of the sentiment.49 This genre of painting evokes nostalgia for simple, self sufficient, life connected to the (home)land, now lost. The second is the image of the refugee, the poor wandering peasant, homeless and destitute. An iconic example is Ismail

Shammout’s Whereto? (1953), depicting an old man with walking cane carrying a barefoot child, as they flee their war torn homes (Fig. 2). Thirdly, these scenes of helpless refugees were in part replaced, especially after 1967, with what Ankori describes as “Guns and Fists.” The kind of social-political, realist propaganda imagery familiar from Latin America and Eastern European revolutionary art (Fig. 3). Similar imagery can still be seen to this day in graffiti on the walls of cities in Gaza and the West bank for example.

Although I do not believe Ankori would think these dominant themes applicable to all contemporary Palestinian art, in light of their dominant presence in its history, I naturally looked for similar motifs in Jacir's work. I found a difficulty in easily locating them there, since when they appear they tend not to be major. Even in works with blatantly Palestinian-related content,

48 Con, “Protest and Resist,” p. 161. 49 This literary phrase, a common reference to Palestine, is from the title of a famous early short story by revolutionary Palestinian poet, Ghassan Kanafani, The Land of Sad Oranges.

11 such as Jacir’s Memorial to 418 Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by

Israel in 1948, (2001) do not comply with the nostalgic or idealizing approach towards these lost places, found in Palestinian artists of the past (Fig. 4). With such a title, the work obviously has a political agenda; however on further examination many other layers of meaning and artistic interest become apparent. What drives Jacir’s work goes beyond what has typically preoccupied

Palestinian art of the second half of the twentieth century. The artist is interested less in memorializing the dead and lost way of life, than in mobilizing her community and facilitating dialogue in the present.

The project Memorial to 418 Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948, was conceived during her residency in P.S.1’s National Studio Program, in

New York City in 2001.50 She proposed installing a refugee tent of the burlap kind, ubiquitous in refugee camps all over the world. Its walls were to be embroidered with the names of the lost villages which she (rather painstakingly) describes in the title. This strategy alone would not have been very original. One is familiar with similar precedents, such as Tracy Emin’s tent piece

Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (1995,) in which Emin appliquéd the names of all her former lovers onto the walls of a simple camping tent. In the end Jacir’s tent however, was much more than the tent-as-art-object alone. It became rather, a site for inclusion and participation (Fig. 5).

According to art historian John Menick, in an essay on Jacir’s work in the 2004 monograph Belongings, the artist had at first intended to complete the laborious task of stitching herself, but she quickly realized that this would be impossible in the time she had remaining till the studio program’s May exhibition.51 She enlisted the help of friends, sending an email asking for assistance. This action salvaged the piece from being derivative and from falling into the

50 Exhibited first in the exhibition Greater New York, curated by Paulo Herkenhoff et al, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York, 2000. 51 Menick, “Undiminished Returns,” pp. 23-24.

10 realm of cliché. As Menick describes it: “Friends and strangers began arriving at her studio in downtown Manhattan at all hours of the day and night in order to lend a hand. Eventually the piece took on a new, more social dimension.”52 This “social dimension” became its most central aspect.

The project transmuted into an art “happening,” as the tent became a site for meetings, discussions and community interchanges. Jacir here is no “helpless refugee.” Whereas

Shammout completed many of his paintings from the squalor of refugee camps, Jacir was working from the rich cultural locus that is New York. Her place in the scene very much secured, taking part as she was in the prestigious Ps1 program. From this position, she became, in fact, a mediator for inter-cultural dialogue. The needle-work, in a way, became a pretext for the social work. As they stitched the names of the villages, amidst political and artistic debate, music (the artist invited musician friends to come and entertain the “workers”) and general chatter, the work became an exercise in communality. This is all the more poignant considering the context of the project, at a time of increasing mistrust and alienation in post-9/11 New York. The time- consuming nature of the project also meant that Jacir was constantly in her studio, isolated from fellow residents participating in the program. Yet she was not at all alone, the studio space transformed as it was into an island of activity. Jacir describes it:

I started the program at the same time the intifada started. That’s when I made the tent. I actually was completely alienated and isolated from the rest of the program because of the political situation in Palestine. And then I made the tent and brought my community into the space, so that was fine.53

When finally presented in exhibition Jacir chose to emphasize the social aspect, and allowed the embroidery work to remain unfinished (Fig. 6). Stress was given to the process of the work instead, to Jacir’s act of bringing “community into the space.” A day-by-day roster of

52 Menick, “Undiminished Returns,” p. 24. 53 Rollig, Belongings, p. 8.

11 sewing participants was displayed, along with texts written by many of them, about their experiences in the studio. The collaborative effort is even apparent in formal aspects of the work.

The varying styles of stitching that appear attest to the many participants. Some of the needle- work is tidy and precise while some appears loose and unskilled for example.

It is significant that, on typing in an online search of images of the project, one is immediately greeted not just with images of the tent installed, but also with documentary photographs of people good-humoredly gathering inside it. In snapshots they appear hunched over in the cramped confines of the tent, at work stitching or just socializing (Fig. 7). Their bodies mimic those of refugees crowded into such tents all over the world, but the context is a far cry from the dirty and miserable reality of refugee camps in Gaza or Jordan. Operating from one of the cultural centers of the world, in the realm of “high culture,” Jacir's tent became a site for sophisticated, articulated, artistic activism. Empowered, Jacir succeeded here in bringing people together. The project reached out to people beyond her immediate Palestinian or artists community. Of particular importance was the meeting of Israelis and Palestinians.

The tent went on to be shown repeatedly in a number of exhibitions; it was accompanied by this description of the process given by the artist:

For two months, I opened my studio to anyone who wanted to sew with me on this Memorial. Over 140 people came, the majority of them I had never met before. They came as lawyers, bankers, filmmakers, dentists, consultants, musicians, playwrights, artists, human rights activists, teachers etc. They came as Palestinians (some of whom come from these villages), as Israelis (who grew up on the remains of these villages) and people from a multitude of countries.54

As well as exposing the cosmopolitan nature of this (and many) of Jacir’s project, this quote displays the artist’s awareness of the importance of the “social dimension.” Yet in his essay, after recognizing this dimension, he goes on to largely ignore its significance. Menick

54 Made in Palestine May 3 - October 23, 2003, Station Museum, Houston, Texas, http://www.stationmuseum.com/Made_in_Palestine-Emily_Jacir/jacir.html, viewed February 14th 2012.

11 instead concentrates on the implications of Jacir's work to the plight of Palestine.55 That Jacir placed such emphasis on the social/participatory aspects of the project however attests to her intention for the project to go beyond being a memorial for the dispossession of 780,000 people in 1948. Memorials serve as both a focus for memories and as sites for a present, living community to actively come together in the here and now. Memorial to 418 Villages which were

Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948 served more so the latter rather than the former purpose. It was, in the end, about what took place in Jacir’s studio in New York, and inclusive rather than exclusively Palestinian art for Palestinians alone. The artist's decision from the start, to write the names of the villages in English, not in their original Arabic, is further testimony to this intention. The artwork became performative in its generative ability to activate

Jacir’s visitors and cross-community relations.

Where We Come From

A similar strategy of perfomativity can be found again in one of Jacir's most written about works: Where we Come From (2001-2003), that deals directly with the question of

Palestine. In this project Jacir responded to requests from fellow Palestinians both in the

Diaspora and inside Israel and Palestine, after having asked them “If I could do anything for you, anywhere in Palestine, what would it be?” Over a period spanning two years, Jacir then attempted to fulfill these wishes to the best of her ability. The requests included banal things such as eating a meal, paying a bill, watering a plant, or playing football on a street in Israel with a Palestinian child. There were also more spiritual requests, such as lighting a candle on the beach at sunset or visiting a mother’s grave. She was asked to take pictures of a person’s family home and of children for relatives desperate but unable to meet them in person. One request prompted Jacir to go on a date with a girl from East Jerusalem for a boy in the West bank. She

55 Menick, “Undiminished Returns,” p. 28.

14 responded even to very vague instructions such as "Do something on a normal day in Haifa, something I might do if I was living there now…" As one review describes it, these were

“achingly simple requests.”56

Beyond highlighting the day-to-day difficulties (and absurdity) of the conflict, Where We

Come From is a reflection on the irony of Jacir’s existence. Using her privileged position as an

American (with an American passport), Jacir could move with relative freedom within Israel, unlike many of her friends and relatives. Note the date of the piece, the context being well into the Second Intifada and the subsequent heightened restriction of movement on entire communities. Jacir photographically documented each of the requests she fulfilled taking simple snap-shots. For example in one image an empty plate appears on a table, revealing the remnants of a meal eaten. In another, Jacir’s shadow is seen hovering over a tombstone as proof of her visit to a graveyard (Fig. 8). The images were accompanied by texts which included the wording of the request and biographic details of the person. This included details pertaining to their origins, current location and a description of the restriction on their movement as a result of the conflict. In addition notes of the artist were added, with her impressions of the task performed.

The viewing logic of the work was based on the pairing of these texts with corresponding images.

Originally Jacir presented these photographs and texts not in an exhibition, but in a publication that was circulated around Palestine. If they had been exhibited in a gallery, nobody would have been able to get there, the artist remarked at the time.57 The project was well received and eventually did go on to exhibition. Video, photographs and framed texts were displayed in rows across the gallery walls.58 Jacir exhibited her passport as well perhaps as a

56 Tyler Green, “S. F. Moma Installed Unusual Wall-Text in Emily Jacir Gallery,” Modern Art Notes, artinfo.com, January 22, 2009, viewed 5th March 2012. 57 Wilson-Goldie, “Dark Materials,” p. 160-161. 58 Where We Come From was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Arnhem, The Netherlands, 2003, Los Angeles International Art Biennial Invitational, 2003, Frumkin Duval Gallery, Santa Monica, California: Al Ma’Mal Foundation, Jerusalem, 2003, Artspace Annex II, New Haven, Connecticut , 2003, Debs & Co, New York, 2003,

15 comment on her own privileged position, without which the artist could not have performed the tasks. A parallel is drawn between the passport and the project. Both are documents of sorts which function on the basis of pictures and written information appearing side by side. In Jacir's words: "For the exhibition of the work," she says, "I felt the texts should be framed and trapped within a fixed border. I felt the photographs should not be framed because this is a dream."59

The project documents and brings home a politically fraught situation that most of the world witnesses daily from a distance, filtered through the media.60 Its dry humor and elegant simplicity may be admirable, but what is most interesting is that its formal viewing logic, manages to engage the viewers in a way that actively involve them. As contemporary art theorist

T. J. Demos points out, the piece is performative, in that Jacir not only identifies with a position of exile, but also enables the viewer to do so. Demos explains how Jacir achieves this, by displaying long lines of series of the texts, followed by the documentary images. This viewing model raises the expectations of the viewer each time and then satisfies their desire to see the request fulfilled.61 This strategy, which the artist had adopted in past works (such as in Change/

Exchange) is what salvages the piece from being an overly sentimental, romantic glorification of the Palestinian plight. As the protagonist in Where We Come From she is neither a helpless refugee nor a militant terrorist. Once again Jacir successfully refutes stereotypes, evading clichéd imagery and sentiment of Palestinian art of an earlier generation. She exposes the absurdity of the conflict through poetic, peaceful means, attaining emotional involvement in her audience, through means of involvement.

The Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, Ramallah, 2004, Nuova Icona, Venice, 2004, Künstlerhaus, Bremen, 2004, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2004, The Jerusalem Fund Gallery, Washington, DC, 2005, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, Kansas, 2005. 59 Ibid. 60 Chrissie Iles et al., Emily Jacir, Whitney Biennial Catalogue, Whitney Museum of Modern Art, 2004. 61 Demos, "Desire in Diaspora,” p. 72.

With this project Jacir epitomizes the positivity of being “out of place” that Said points towards.62 The very language Jacir uses is already a departure from what might be typically imagined when one thinks of the formal language of “Palestinian art”- particularly the figurative, realist post-1948 paintings that Ankori describes in Palestinian Art. The two works discussed here, Memorial to 418 Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in

1948 and Where We Come from, demonstrate that Jacir often presents remains of collaborative actions, in which individual, national and transnational histories intertwine, raising universal questions about borders, mobility and belonging in a "globalized" world.63

Moreover, what is evident in the works discussed so far, is that Jacir as an artist has adopted an approach familiar to us from twentieth and twenty first century (post-modern) art practices. Along with other Palestinian artists of her generation, Jacir's work introduces a highly contemporary, conceptual thought process less familiar to us from accounts of Palestinian art of the past. Jacir's process encompasses a kind of neo-conceptual approach, using video, texts and photographic documentation. 64 She is at once artist, archivist and activist. In the long list of influences that she cites in one interview, only two of the twenty artists she mentions are of

Palestinian descent.65 It would be just as easy to look for influences on her work from American artists and contemporaries in Europe. What emerges from all this is that Jacir is far more than just “Palestinian Artist.”

Jacir's in-between position, as an artist who operates in a constant movement between

East and West, between differing cultural contexts, demonstrates the impossibility of any essentialist reading of the artist's identity or work. Certainly, any reading based on one geographical location is far too limiting. The identity "Palestinian," although evoking strong ties

62 Rollig, Belongings, p. 17. Also see Edward W. Said, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives, New York: Pantheon, 1986. 63 Murtaza Vali, “All that Remains: Emily Jacir,” Art AsiaPacific, Issue 54, Jul/Aug2007, pp. 98-103. 64 For a discussion of neo-conceptual art see Hal Foster, "What's Neo About the Neo Avant-Garde," October , Issue 70, Fall 1994, pp. 5-32. 65 Rollig, Belongings, p. 9.

17 to a very real homeland, is more strongly associated today with a chronic homelessness. It has become synonymous with exile, mass migration, travel and transitory existence. A certain ambiguity is inherent in the notion of Palestinian art. As the writing of Ankori and Boullata both demonstrate, Palestinian artists are influenced by art from their host countries and respond to contemporary trends in art where they go. These influences are no less meaningful than an infusion of traditional Palestinian imagery or content in their work.

Figure 2 Ismail Shammout, Whereto?, 1953, oil on canvas, 95 X 120 cm Figure 3 Adnan al Sharif, PLO Poster, 1978

Figure 4 Emily Jacir, Memorial to 418 Villageswhich were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948, 2001, refugee tent and embroidery thread, 138 x 115 x 96 inch

Figure 5 Tracy Emin, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, 1995

Figure 6 Emily Jacir, Memorial to 418 Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948, 2001, detail

Figure 7 Emily Jacir, Memorial to 418 Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948, 2001, documentation of viewers gathering

Figure 8 Emily Jacir, Munir, Where We Come From, detail, 2001-2003

Chapter Two: Identity - Emily Jacir as Palestinian Artist

Figure 9 Emily Jacir, Untitled (Self-Portrait), 1998, toy camel and scotch tape, 7.5 x 12.5 cm

Palestinian art “neatly packaged”

One might claim that the fixation on Jacir as a Palestinian artist may have been to her advantage. As a “rising star” in the art-world, since the early 2000’s, Jacir has been taking part in exhibitions all over the globe, representing “Palestinian Art” in one international art biennial after another. A cursory glance over the titles of the many exhibitions in which Jacir’s work has been shown, reveals a curatorial preoccupation with her “Palestinian-ness.” To name but a few:

Everywhere/Nowhere, Homeland, Made in Palestine, A Plea to Somewhere Else, Settlement,

Entry Denied and Palestine c/o Venice. One review, by Don J. Con writing in Art Asia Pacific, rather skeptically questions this success of Jacir’s in a scathing review of her most recent monograph Emily Jacir (Verlag Für Moderne Kunst, Nürnberg, 2008):

…one wonders if the curatorial attention and prize money are actually being given to the artist, or rather thrown, out of a combination of naiveté, ignorance and plain old political correctness, at the lengthy, insoluble conflict in the Middle East as it is abstracted and neatly packaged by Jacir for museum and corporate consumption.66

Many obviously appreciate this ability of Jacir to “abstract and neatly package” the messy conflict in the Middle East, as is evident by the several prestigious awards and grants the artist has received. On the one hand, the art world has been quick to embrace a “Palestinian artist,” whose art, with its fashionable, dogged conceptualism and contemporary language can be understood and appreciated by a Western audience. On the other hand, for the same reasons that her work has been celebrated, it has provoked negative comments. There is a sense that Jacir has been attacked for being a token Palestinian artist, her work accused of lacking subtlety and being too “overwhelmingly political.”67

In the past critics deriding the quality of Jacir’s conceptual practice, have dismissed the style and form of the work, claiming that her work is at times generic and obvious, and describing her conceptual strategies as derivative and unoriginal.68 Political art in general is often dismissed as mediocre, didactic, or merely propagandist.69 Jacir’s Palestinian perspective has even garnered accusations of anti-Semitism, as her work is seen by some as highlighting the suffering of only one side in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Protests have been held outside institutions showing her work. In one instance, when the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art acquired and exhibited Jacir’s Where We Come From in 2009, angry letters and pressure from undisclosed sources led the museum to hurriedly hang up additional explanatory wall-text alongside her work, in an attempt to placate these voices of protest.70 The problem with this

66 Con, “Protest and Resist,” p. 161. 67 Joshua Mack, “Emily Jacir: accumulations,” Modern Painters, June 2005, pp. 111-112. 68 Idem, “Emily Jacir, the Hugo Boss Prize 2008,” Art Review, Issue 32, May 2009, p. 115. 69 Adila Laidi-Hanieh, “Destination: Jerusalem Servees, Interview with Emily Jacir,” Jerusalem Quarterly, Issue 40, Winter 2009/2010, p. 61. 70 S. F. Moma spokesperson at the time, Libby Garrison, reportedly said, “The decision [to add the text] was made by the curators and the director, the trustees were not involved. It was made because when the work was on view

11 response was that this ‘extra’ wall-text reduced the work of art to one about a singular political situation; instead of leaving the work open to possible universal implications.71

Of all Jacir’s projects, perhaps the most contested to date was also the work that earned her the most accolades, her ongoing project, Material for a Film (2005-ongoing,) presented first in 2005 (Fig. 10). This complex project combines performance, installation, video and archival material. It revolves around a true historical event, that of the assassination in Rome of

Palestinian Intellectual Wael Zuiter, in 1972, by Mossad agents. It was one in a number of such political assassinations carried out in revenge for the terrorist massacre of members of the Israeli

Olympic team earlier that year. In the piece, Jacir investigates and poetically re-presents Zuaiter's life and death to the public. What emerges, beyond an empathetic portrait of the man, is a parallel between Jacir and Zuaiter. Indeed the artist speaks openly of her identification with the tragic figure, both having lived in the Diaspora specifically Italy and the Gulf, having creative and intellectual aspirations and being active in establishing pro-Palestinian awareness in the

West.72

Of the masses of information Jacir gathered, one detail seemed to capture the artist's imagination. Zuaiter had hoped to translate the book One Thousand and One Nights directly from Arabic into Italian, a task which he was never to complete. “When he was shot, a copy of the book was in his breast pocket at the time. One of the bullets penetrated it and was found lodged in its pages. In a firing range, using the same make of weapon used by the Mossad agents,

Jacir shot through exactly one thousand and one copies of blank white books (representing

Zuaiters unwritten work), in homage to Zuaiters failed task. She then presented Material for a

Film, Performance (2006), an installation which presented the white books neatly displayed, on rows upon rows of white shelves, from floor to ceiling. This strange library display evoked a

(without wall text) during the acquisition process, we received numerous letters of concern from visitors who saw it on the wall.” artinfo.com, January 22nd 2009, viewed 5th March 2012. 71 Green, “Unusual Wall-Text.” 72 Vali, “All that Remains,” p. 101.

14 minimalist, modern, memorial site. In an adjacent room she displayed photographs of the pages of the original blood-smeared book, displaying every page the bullet had gone through, laying bare its trajectory.

In addition she arranged the archival material into a sort of walk-in scrap book. This was comprised of letters, documents and photographs from the life of Zuaiter, from personal snapshots to evidence from the crime-scene of his murder.73 These were accompanied by notes

Jacir made herself, along with photographs she had taken of Zuaiter’s local haunts. She combined sound and video into the piece as well. Viewers could listen to sound recordings of telephone conversations the Mossad had taken from his tapped telephone line, or listen to a recording of his favorite piece of music (Mahler’s Ninth Symphony). In her investigative work

Jacir unearthed a video of him in a cameo appearance as an extra in a film he had done, to earn some money. Zuaiter's fleeting appearance in the scene was displayed on a small monitor mounted on the wall. In One thousand and One Nights the character of Scheherazade must keep telling her story or else she will die. A parallel is drawn with the task of Palestinian artists and intellectuals, who suffer from attempts to stifle or deny the Palestinian narrative. With this wealth of material Jacir is spinning a tale of the life and death of Zuaiter, keeping him alive in collective memory. At the same time the piece counteracts widespread ignorance, denial, or repression of Palestinian history.

Documentation of the preparatory performance exists showing Jacir standing at the shooting range with the gun held out. The white books are seen piled beside her (Fig. 11). This image has appeared in many of the reviews covering the piece. In it the rampant motif of “guns and fists,” which Ankori recognizes as a major theme in revolutionary Palestinian art, appears with an inverted message, one of anti-violence and self-empowerment.

73 Ken Johnson, “Material for a Palestinian’s Life and Death,” The New York Times, February 13, 2009, p. c29.

Jacir defies several dominant narratives: first, that Zuaiter was a terrorist, and secondly that the Palestinians as a people have surrendered culture to militancy.74 Perhaps it was this achievement along with the conviction and passion she displays for exposing injustice through poetic means, which brought her such acclaim for the piece. (It was for this project that she was awarded the Golden Lion at Venice in 2007, and she exhibited it again in 2008 for the exhibition of the Hugo Boss prize at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York). Yet, at the time of its exhibition at the Guggenheim, Howard Halle of Time Out New York wrote of the decision to award the prize to Jacir: “That such a crude, self-indulgent exercise has been given one of contemporary art’s most prestigious awards is unfortunate, though not, sadly, entirely unexpected.” Ken Johnson of The New York Times argued that: “If the ultimate point is to arouse humane concern for Palestinians in general, Ms. Jacir’s work falls short.”75 Furthermore, with

Material for a Film, Jacir’s conceptual approach (once again) was subject to accusations of being derivative. In a review of the Guggenheim show art critic Joshua Mack wrote:

The strategies Jacir employs- appropriation, the mixing of biography and autobiography, and the creation of narratives which may or may not be complete, or even accurate- are familiar ones. So too her second piece Material for a Film (Performance) (2006)- in which 1,000 blank books she shot with a pistol are arranged on shelves as a kind of memorial to Zuitaer’s unfinished work- recalls precedents as varied as Rachel Whiteread’s monument to Holocaust victims in Vienna and Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC.76

Underlying these voices of objection lays a paradox: On the one hand, Jacir is awarded for being a “Palestinian artist” who creates art on a par with her “Western” contemporaries. At the same time, for the same reason, her images are misread through a cloud of prejudice. For if she were not to operate with the same level of conceptual sophistication, it is doubtful she would be taken seriously enough to invite such acclaim and reviews in the New York Times in the first

74 Howard Halle, “The Hugo Boss Prize 2008: Emily Jacir,” Time Out New York, March 5th, 2009, http://www.timeout.com/newyork/art/the-hugo-boss-prize-2008-emily-jacir, viewed 3rd February 2012. 75 Johnson, “Material for a Palestinian’s Life”, p. c29. 76 Mack, “Emily Jacir, the Hugo Boss Prize,” p. 115.

16 place. Criticism of this nature actually exposes the prejudice of those critics who are misjudging

Jacir, focusing purely on her as a “Palestinian artist,” as if by belonging to this community, she has no right to claim and make use of contemporary art’s methods. Perhaps if they were not to allow marginalization to affect their critical judgment, they would recognize that Jacir's interests in this project in fact reveal several layers of (art)reflexive thought, irrespective of her nationality.

Emily Jacir - Contemporary Artist

Jacir goes beyond the local and personal in several ways. Material for a Film is an investigation into the possibilities of the medium of installation and film itself. This is present starting in the playful title Material for a Film. The title implies that there is still work to be done. Jacir is suggesting the audience make the "film" themselves. The work takes on the form of an interactive installation through which the viewer moves freely, choosing his or her own route through the copious amounts of material (archival, text, video and sound). The act of editing, associated with the medium of film and video, is seemingly lacking. Instead Jacir provides evidence of research and “rough-cut” footage alone, the responsibility for editing then not so much lacking, as redirected into the audience's hands. As it negotiates its way through the installation, sifting through the material, the audience is free to decide upon the direction of the

"plot." The result is a blend of fiction and truth. Jacir exposes something of the mechanisms at work behind the medium of film and storytelling.

This freedom that Jacir allows the viewer, displays an (ongoing) preoccupation with the possibilities of viewer and art-work relations. The viewer is actively involved, free to weave his or her own version of events as they maneuver themselves within the work. The work becomes a statement about the subjectivity of memory and history. Finally, the nature of the work reveals

Jacir's interest in the nature of the archive and the possibilities of her role as artist as archivist.

The artist confirms this in a recent interview with curator and art-historian Adila Laidi-Hanieh,

17 stating that “the logic of the archive” has been an on-going theme in her practice.77 This interest may be linked to broader, more universal, concerns with repressed historical narratives.

In conclusion, when one looks beyond the Palestinian perspective in Jacir’s projects

(even ones with such blatant “Palestinian” content), one finds questions that occupy many other artists in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, questions of a reflexive nature, pertaining to the purpose and possibilities of art in today’s world. It is the boundary between art and life that interests these artists, their work often revealing the illusionary nature of any such border.

Jacir does this in Material for a Film through involvement of the viewer.

Viewer/audience/community participation has become increasingly central to the practice of many contemporary artists. This is noticeable in a shift in contemporary art trends towards relational, empathetic and political aesthetics. Claire Bishop describes this approach in her essay

"Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics”:

…relational art works seek to establish intersubjective encounters (be these literal or potential) in which meaning is elaborated collectively rather than in the privatized space of individual consumption. The implication is that this work inverses the goals of Greenbergian modernism. Rather than a discrete, portable, autonomous work of art that transcends its context, relational art is entirely beholden to the contingencies of its environment and audience. Moreover, this audience is envisaged as a community: rather than a one-to-one relationship between work of art and viewer, relational art sets up situations in which viewers are not just addressed as a collective, social entity, but are actually given the wherewithal to create a community, however temporary or utopian this may be. 78

Jacir often seeks to create instances of community in her work. These concerns are evident in the performative aspect of her practice, her engagement with audience and a manipulation of the viewer-art-work dynamic. It is apparent that beyond her response as an artist

77 Laidi-Hanieh, “Destination: Jerusalem Servees,” pp. 59-67. 78 Claire Bishop, "Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics," October, issue 110, 2004, pp. 51-79.

18 to the minutiae of everyday existence, Jacir operates as activist and archivist.79 These aspects of

Jacir’s work are often under-discussed, as critical response to Jacir is distracted by an insistent return to the context of Jacir as “Palestinian artist.” Her work is regarded as specifically dealing with the politics and poetics of "being Palestinian." What this reception fails to see is that Jacir is in fact interested in deconstructing and testing anew the very possibilities of the concept of

"community" at large. Jacir’s work approaches the audience as “community” and the art work as a site for the collective processing of meaning and tests these relations.

When asked what her main motivation is for choosing the content of her work, Jacir does not mention her Palestinian identity at all, but answers: “It is about the relationship of myself and my experience and my body to my surroundings…It is my lived experience wherever I am.”80 If

Jacir often reflects on the Palestinian people in her work, I think it is not so much out of a desire to create art that is particularly Palestinian, rather than art that is an honest response to her own life. In a later interview given in 2009 Jacir indeed says: “My work comes out of my life experience and I think it is actually quite broad and varied...”81

International Art

In From Paris to Riyadh: Drawings for my Mother, (1999-2001) one can really sense

Jacir's conflicted identity and ambivalence towards the several worlds she inhabits. The drawings, reminiscent from afar of large abstract paintings, are made of a series of smaller drawings attached together into two large grid-like formats (Fig. 12). The individual pages are tracings from the front covers of the women's magazine Vogue. The work refers to a childhood memory of Jacir's, involving these magazines, herself and her mother, on plane journeys returning to Riyadh. The artist recalls her mother often flipping through a glossy Vogue fashion

79 Young, “The Hugo Boss Prize.” 80 Rollig, Belongings, p. 8. 81 Laidi-Hanieh, “Destination: Jerusalem Servees,” p. 67.

19 magazine during the flight, before having to take out and arrange her head scarf for entrance into

Saudi Arabia. In order to enter the country with the “offensive” Western magazine, her mother was required to black out any indecently exposed body parts of the models appearing in its pages.

Years later Jacir repeats this action in From Paris to Riyadh: Drawings for my Mother using her mother’s original collection of old Vogue magazines. Drawing on Glassine paper, she uses a generic black marker similar to what her mother used, to trace over the front cover of each edition. The blacked out blocks that appear abstract, upon closer approach reveal themselves to be the shapes of the hands, arms, chests, midriffs and legs of the cover models. The phenomenon of censoring magazines is familiar to women from the Muslim world. Contemporary street artist

Princess Hijab for example, similarly references it when she uses heavy black air-brush to obscure images of models in subway advertisements, in the tunnels of the Paris’ Metro System.

(Fig. 13).

These kinds of works are interesting in their ambiguity. From Paris to Riyadh: Drawings for My Mother is both a comment on Western society that objectifies and commodifies women, and on the religious Arab world for oppressing the freedom of women. Beyond its political implications, there is also a formal aesthetic ambiguity in the piece. Jacir’s decision to mount the drawings in grid form, on two large panels- reminiscent in scale and aesthetic to American

Abstract Expressionist painting, positions it securely in dialogue with a Western, modernist, even

New York, art tradition as well.82

After Modern Art

As opposed to the Abstract Expressionists and their resistance to narrative, Jacir’s piece is very much loaded with a story. The title From Paris to Riyadh: Drawings for my Mother

82 For a discussion of the significance of the grid in modernist painting see: Rosalind E. Krauss, “Modernist Myths: Grids,” in Rosalind E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, London, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1986, pp. 8-23.

(1999-2001), already reveals the personal and political layers of the work. It is known that

American Minimalist artists introduced the practice of naming their work “Untitled,” in an attempt to erase any trace of narrative from their work, drawing attention rather to pure form, line, proportion and material.83 It is interesting to note in this context that Jacir has been known to name her pieces "Untitled" only to add in brackets narrative details, such as Untitled (servees)

(2009), Untitled (Kosov/Baghdad…according to NATO) (2000), or Untitled (self-portrait) (1998)

(Fig. 9).

Jacir here is rebelling as much against her artistic "fathers" in New York (the -mostly male- Abstract Expressionists and Minimalists,) as she is against Western consumerism or

Muslim restriction of women. Along with dealing with issues of East versus West, Jacir is in dialogue with modernist and post-modernist art practice, considered to be products of Western thought. For example her use of an interdisciplinary approach- photography and text, installation, performance, video and so on- is clearly influenced by a host of late twentieth-century art- influences.

Ghost Citizen

Jacir is a “Palestinian artist,” but she is also a woman artist and an American artist and at times a European artist, an Arab Woman artist and a secular liberal artist and the list goes on.

Her identity as an artist, mirroring her identity as a person, is fragmented, layered and often conflicted. This is of course true of many artists and people today. Jacir epitomizes the international contemporary artist, whose peripatetic lifestyle informs their work as they move around the globe. What differentiates Jacir's nomadic, New York-artist lifestyle is that in her case, as a Palestinian, a state of nomadism and displacement, preexists her career as an artist.

They are inherent to her identity as Palestinian. She is artist of both nowhere and everywhere.

83 For discussion of early Minimalism see: Michael Fried, "Art and Objecthood.",Artforum, Vol.10, June 1967, pp. 12-23.

Take for instance the project Linz Diary (2003) that Jacir completed during a residency in

Linz, Austria (Fig. 14). The project has little to do with Palestinian identity; certainly it has nothing to do with the conflict in the Middle East or the dichotomy between Western and Arab perspectives. Jacir away from home again (wherever home may be) captures images of herself taken by the thirty-six webcams around the Austrian city. A lone figure in a rather bustling

European-looking city square, she writes in the text accompanying one of the images from the series: “(there is) me lying on the fountain, staring up at the patch of blue sky above Linz, watching a small airplane go by.”84 The plane she reports to have seen in the sky evokes further thoughts of eyes watching, hovering above everything, much as surveillance cameras in cities do, as do satellites orbiting the earth for that matter. The airplane of course also takes us back to

Jacir’s recurring themes of travel and transience- the fleetingness of all things, times and places.

Having purposefully positioned herself into the frame of these webcams, Jacir uses the invasive surveillance apparatus as a means of providing evidence of her own fleeting residence in the foreign place. As Tom Vanderbilt observed, in a review of the artist’s work in Artforum a year later, Jacir was: "also becoming part of a global network of images, powered by remote servers in unknown locations. She is everywhere and nowhere, a ghost citizen in an imaginary republic, an exile…”85 The more universal implications of the work, then, speak of loneliness and a desire to connect in an alienated, technology-mediated world, just as much as it does about being an alien in a foreign place.

As someone who is all too aware of the oppressive and controlling tactics of the authorities in the name of security (having experienced life during conflict in Palestine/Israel), of course Jacir is sensitive to this kind of invasion of privacy. What we learn from Linz Diary is that the invasion of authorities into the lives of individuals is evident all over the globe, although it may take on subtler forms in other places. Jacir is alluding to the level of connectivity we have

84 Tom Vanderbilt, “Emily Jacir,” Artforum, February 2004, pp. 140-141. 85 Ibid., p. 141.

41 now reached, as a result of ever-increasing sophisticated (digital) technology, as having both liberating and dangerously anti-liberal effects on our lives. Jacir's dealing here with surveillance culture goes far beyond the specifics of the Palestinian conflict, or even the plight of the exile.

This demonstrates again that, although it is from a position of Palestinian artist in exile that Jacir operates, exile is just her starting-point.

Figure 10 Emily Jacir, Material for a Film, 2005-ongoing, detail and installation view, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2009.

Figure 11 Emily Jacir, Material for a Film, documentation of performance, 2006

Figure 12 Emily Jacir, From Paris to Riyadh: Drawings for my Mother, 1999- 2001, marker on velum, 246 sheets each 12 x 9 inch

Figure 13 Priess Hijab, graffiti, Paris Metro, 2010

Figure 14 Emily Jacir, Linz Diary, 2003, still from webcam and text

Chapter Three: Beyond Exile

Travel, arrival, departures, airports, conveyor belts, luggage, emails, tents, footsteps, the open road and the dirt path. All these are images that have appeared, or are evoked, in Jacir’s work. The artist has been consistently exploring the complexities of human movement, travel and transport, responding to her own displacement. Yet in reading about her work, these themes are often reduced to one grand experience, an exploration specifically into the state of exile. This chapter will focus on this central theme of exility, in order to examine how Jacir both finds expression for it and goes beyond it, in her work.

Exile is familiar as a central theme in Jewish culture, much as it has become in

Palestinian life. The longing to “return to Jerusalem” has been expressed by Jews in prayers for over two thousand years. The lines continued to be articulated to this day, even with a Jewish state established. Ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel still consider themselves in exile as they await the return of the Messiah and the resurrection of the Jewish temple.86 One could argue that exile informs an inherent part of Jewish identity, elevated almost to a spiritual state. Although the idea is shrouded in sadness and gravity, it served as a unifying factor for Jews in the Diaspora, much as it does now for the Palestinian community. This irony was not lost on Said for example, who recognized the painful paradox inherent in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to have been exiled by a nation of exiles.87 Said warns that views of exile in literature and, moreover, in religion

“obscure what is truly horrendous: that exile is irremediably secular and unbearably historical; that it is produced for human beings by other human beings.”88

There is something inherently dialectical about the state of exile. One is perpetually left with the visibility of the lost home and at the same time with the invisibility of exile as a new

86 Psalm 137 is the well-known lament of the Babylonian Jews who wept "by the rivers of Babylon" and declared, "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither." 87 Edward Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000, p. 141. 88 Ibid., p. 138.

47 home. According to Ihab Saloul, a contemporary Palestinian cultural analyst, this invisibility of exile as a new home is a focus of most contemporary Palestinian narratives of al-Naqba, the

Catastrophe, of 1948.89 This is as typical to the experience of exile now as it was in the past. In

1945, writing in exile from Nazi Germany, Adorno also expresses this sentiment, claiming “It is part of morality not to be at home in one’s home.”90 In America, after fleeing persecution in

Europe, Adorno is writing about the importance of not allowing oneself to feel at home when in exile.91

In Reflections on Exile Edward Said wrote most extensively on the subject. Exploring the many possibilities of exile, as “an existential and epistemological condition, as a spatial and temporal state of being, belonging, and becoming, in all its material and metaphorical contexts,”92 Said recognizes this stubborn insistence of exiles to never quite relax and let go of their identity as exiles:

No matter how well they may do, exiles are always eccentrics who feel their difference (even as they frequently exploit it) as a kind of orphanhood… Clutching difference like a weapon to be used with stiffened will, the exile jealously insists on his or her right to refuse to belong…93

Suffice it to say that Said recognizes that exile is a highly complex condition. In After the

Last Sky (1986), an insightful book attempting to expand on the idea of Palestinian identity, written not long after Reflections on Exile, Said puts it simply, explaining, “Identity- who we are, where we come from, what we are – is difficult to maintain in exile.”94 Perhaps because of this, communities in exile have typically clung to their homesickness. It seems that the moral obligation that Adorno spoke of stems from the fear exiles feel of assimilation. So exiles form a

89 Saloul, “Exilic Narrativity,” p. 127. 90 Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from a damaged life, trans. E. F.N. Jephcott, New York, Verso 1991, originally published 1951. 91 Ibid., p. 89. 92 Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, “The Politics and Poetics of Exile: Edward Said in Africa,” Research in African Literatures, Vol. 36, No. 3, Autumn, 2005, published by Indiana University Press, pp. 1-22 93 Said, Reflections on Exile, pp. 144-145. 94 Edward W. Said, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives, New York, Columbia University Press, 1999, p. 16.

48 tenacious grip on their customs and lifestyles from home, relishing a lingering state of longing for it. This human impulse to celebrate one’s own state of exile, is apparent also in Jacir's art.

In the essay “Desire in Diaspora” T. J. Demos recognizes this quality in her work:

One is denied the feeling of being at home in exile due to thoughts of the loss of one’s home. But this is a sitelessness that is frequently relished in exile as well, a paradox perpetuated in Jacir’s work: to refuse to feel at home while homeless and –perhaps perversely- to stubbornly own that homelessness, for the converse would only be a mark of resignation or of capitulation.95

This refusal to forget and become indifferent is found in Jacir’s series titled Christmas

(2000). A public-intervention piece, the project successfully distorts the perceived boundaries between “art” and “life,” bordering between art and activism. Jacir, adopting guerrilla-art tactics, planted custom-designed Christmas cards in with regular greeting cards on display in gift shops in New York (Fig. 15).96 With the holidays approaching, Christmas shoppers may have happened upon them quite unexpectedly, while browsing for seasonal greeting cards to send to friends and relatives. Jacir’s cards at first glance seem innocent enough. Typical scenes of Jesus in the manger and Bethlehem appear. On closer inspection of the illustrations, Apache helicopters hover in the sky and scenes of war and the occupation invade the peaceful scenery. In the year

2000, at the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Jacir wanted to remind people of the reality of

Bethlehem at that time. In the face of powerlessness, it seems that Jacir wanted to convey to free

Americans what life was like for Palestinians at Christmas that year. Stubbornly defying the jolly Christmas spirit, Jacir refused to sit back and enjoy the festivities from the relative comfort of pre-9/11 exile in New York.

Around this time Jacir started work on another series that was similarly subversive in nature, the humorous Sexy Semite (2000-2002). Over the next two years Jacir placed a series of

95 Demos, “Desire in Diaspora,” p. 78. 96 For an introduction to the idea of “Poetic Terrorism” see Hakim Bay, T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, New York: Autonomedia, 1991 (first published 1985).

49 personal ads in the Village Voice, a local newspaper in New York. These adverts were purportedly from Palestinian women in the States, seeking Israeli men to date and hopefully marry, in order to return "home." Underlying the humor is a sardonic comment on Israel’s Law of Return (Fig 16).97 According to The Electronic Intifada (a Palestinian online magazine for art, music and culture), Jacir was able to execute the work with the help of 60 New York-based

Palestinians, yet again demonstrating an ability to collaborate and mobilize a community of art- activists.98 The rather cheeky wording of the adverts included such exclamations as “Leggy

Palestinian Semite seeks Jewish hunk to create our love shack settlement in Tiberias. Let’s take turns with hummus as body paint and explore …” while another said “YOU STOLE THE

LAND, MAY AS WELL TAKE THE WOMEN! Redheaded Palestinian ready to be colonized by your army. You: Jewish, Hot, Strong. U take me home + I’ll let you win.”

Beyond challenging the notion of the Law of Return and the general, widespread

(mis)understanding of the word “Semite,” in Sexy Semite one can again sense Jacir's refusal to feel at home in New York. Expressing a desire to “go home” for good, with projects such as these, Jacir asserts her (painful) exility, using humor and irony, to provoke debate in the public sphere.99

In Exile at Home

Of course, for Palestinians exile is made more complicated by the fact that Palestinians in

Israel and the territories are essentially in exile in their own homeland. There exists a kind of

97 The Law of Return is Israeli legislation, passed on 5 July 1950. It gives Jews the right of return and settlement in Israel and to gain citizenship. In 1970, the right of entry and settlement was extended to people of Jewish ancestry, and their spouses. 98 Maymanah Farhat, “Palestinian artist Emily Jacir awarded top prize,” The Electronic Intifada, 15th December 2008, http://electronicintifada.net, viewed June 2011. 99 The piece proved so provocative that it caught the attention of the newspaper and resulted in it citing US officials’ warning of a possible terrorist plot!

51 displacement “at home.”100 By 2002 Jacir, always on the move, was living in Ramallah and teaching at Bir-Zeit University. While there she made the video Crossing Surda (a record of going to and from work), (2002). The work reflects on this almost uniquely Palestinian experience of exile in one’s own land. In addition it can also be seen as part of Jacir’s (ongoing) investigation into the physical and social experience of space.

In order to get to work at the University from Ramallah, Jacir had to go through an Israeli army check-point each day, greatly delaying her journey. On one such occasion, typical artist that she is, she had her video camera out and was recording the situation for herself.101 When nearby soldiers saw her filming they confiscated her tape and apparently held her at gun-point for several hours, adding other indignities such as throwing her passport in the mud. From this

“horrible experience” she decided to cut a hole in her bag and surreptitiously film her commute to work, which she did for eight days.102 The result was a 132 minute, two-channel video installation, accompanied by 30 video stills selected by the artist (Fig. 18). Through the awkward, bumpy movement of the camera swinging in her bag, the viewer sees the backs of feet and shadows underfoot of other faceless people in line with Jacir; also, glimpses of IDF soldiers are caught, their boots and M16 rifles swinging by. Vehicles appear on the road, including menacing tank wheels, all against a dirty backdrop of unpaved and pot-holed roads (Fig 19).

Crossing Surda was a timely comment on (im)mobility beyond the locality of late

Second Intifada in Israel. Jacir was by now working in the context of a post-9/11 world. Security measures common in Israel/Palestine but until recently, quite foreign to places like New York, had become common in the States as well as in international airports everywhere. The global hysteria that ensued after the attacks only hyped up the distrust and difficulties felt by exiles, especially in the Arab community. In particular those trying to travel were targets. Jacir, as

100 Mieke Bal, “Lost in Space, Lost in the Library,” Eds. Sam, M. Durrant and Catherine Lord, Essays in Migratory Aesthetics: Cultural Practices Between Migration and Art-Making, Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007, p. 32. 101 Rollig, Belongings, p. 18. 102 Ibid., p. 18.

50 someone who moves back and forth between places frequently, would have experienced this mounting tension.

Other projects, such as Where We Come From, similarly created in the context of the

Second Intifada, could also be placed into this category of works that investigate the constant movement (or its opposite- the restriction of movement), that typifies subjects in exile: referring, of course, to these themes specifically through the Palestinian experience, as Jacir has stated:

That work is…autobiographical in the sense that it is coming from my experience of spending my whole life going back and forth between Palestine and other parts of the world. I am always taking things back and forth for other people. Because I have been going back and forth continuously my whole life, I have seen the deliberate fragmentation of our lands and the isolation of our people from each other.

With this statement Jacir reveals how her shuffling “back and forth” has allowed her a certain perspective of the situation denied to those who stay in one place. As an exile, forced to leave only to stubbornly return again and again, the painful changes in the landscape and day-today lives of Palestinians who do not leave, are magnified in her eyes. In this position of a returning exile, she also becomes witness. As a witness she is no longer quite at home, but looking on from the outside.

It was from such a position of witness from a distance, as sympathetic onlooker, that Jacir developed another video-piece during this period: From Texas with Love (2002). The work has been compared with Crossing Surda not just because they were made in the same year,103 the works share certain obvious similarities in form and content. Both document a journey and movement on-the-road. As Azadeh Saljooghi remarks in her essay “From Palestine to Texas:

Moving Along with Emily Jacir,” “Both works audiovisually follow the ordinary act of going somewhere in two different topographies.” Saljooghi takes up Jacir’s position here as witness as well, suggesting that Jacir projects the responsibility of witnessing onto the viewer: “As a

103 For example Azadeh Saljooghi has written a comparative study of these works in, "From Palestine to Texas: Moving Along with Emily Jacir," in Building Walls in a Borderless World, ed. Nasser, Jaime. J, Los Angeles: University of Southern California, School of Cinema Television, Div. of Critical Studies, 2009 , p.23-29.

51 witness, and through these two audiovisual testimonies, Jacir supplies the “original” for those who lack the experience of freedom and captivity. Firsthand or otherwise, witnessing implies responsibility.”104 This infers a certain performative element to these videos - despite the apparent passivity of the viewer (seated in front of a screen or projection).

As opposed to Crossing Surda, which was filmed (surreptitiously) on foot, From Texas with Love is shot from the dashboard of a moving vehicle that Jacir herself drove. The artist placed her camera in a position that captured the open road in the centre of the frame, and proceeded to drive without interruption for an hour on a long desert road in Western Texas, where she was completing a residency at the time. The resulting video is of the road and desert scenery rushing by, in an almost reckless expression and celebration of freedom of movement.

The imagery is accompanied by a musical soundtrack, compiled by Jacir, of "song requests" from fellow Palestinians. The work was made at a time when Palestinians in the territories were suffering from extreme restriction of movement, as Crossing Surda amply illustrates. With IDF's tightening of check-points along roads in the territories, it would have been impossible for the artist’s friends and family to get into their cars and just drive, uninterrupted, for even twenty minutes. Jacir asked friends and family living under these difficult conditions, what kind of music they would listen to if they too could just drive without check- points and border control. As she describes it: “The piece was about being in a place so incredible and beautiful and being able to drive freely and to listen to music, and at the same time wanting to cry, because this cannot happen back home.”105 (Note how Jacir uses the word

“home” to describe Palestine, even though she has lived most of her life in the Diaspora). And so in the video the music plays as if live on the car stereo as Jacir drives.

The musical requests, 51 songs in all, vary from Lebanese, French and American pop songs. Songs such as Madonna’s ultimate capitalist Western ditty, Material Girl to ones with

104 Ibid, p. 25. 105 Rollig, Belongings, p. 18.

51 nationalist, political aspirations such as Shaaban Abdel Rahim’s Bakrah Israeli (I Hate Israel) and the Palestinian national anthem.106 This eclectic mix of musical taste is a reflection of the diversity of Palestinian society within Israel/Palestine. Again Jacir questions stereotypes of how

Americans and Israelis especially, picture the Palestinian population. Once again Jacir takes advantage of her privileged position, this time as bearer of a driver's license and a passport in the

United States. With Crossing Surda Jacir allows the viewer to “experience the discriminatory practices that favors ‘basic human rights’ only for certain geographies and nationalities.”

Belonging

In Belongings, the monograph dedicated to Jacir’s earlier works, art historian, critic, and curator, Christian Kravagna contributed an essay "Staying, Leaving, Returning: on Mobility,

Space and Perspective." There, in response to Jacir's work, he elaborates on the condition of exile.107 Through the analysis of several literary works, Kravagna discusses a position of exile described by Albert Memmi as “a position in the world that is characterized by simultaneously being at home and not-home in two cultural and ideological spaces, which are historically and politically connected.” (In Jacir’s case this could be Palestine and The United States, Israel and

America, and Israel and Palestine.) There exists a kind of “double consciousness” which apparently “…W.E.B Du Bois already spoke of one hundred years ago, and which derived from the physical and mental movement of subjects across the borders of a divided world.”108

Although writing in very different contexts (Memmi - coming from colonial Tunisia/France and

Algiers, and Du Bois- advocating equal rights for African Americans), it would seem that this double perspective characterizes the state of exile. This perspective is evident in Jacir’s position.

106 Saljooghi, “From Palestine to Texas,” p. 24. 107 Christian Kravagna, "Staying, Leaving, Returning. On mobility, Space and Perspective," in Rollig, p.60-75. 108 Ibid., p. 73.

In Ramallah/New York, (2004-2005) Jacir reflects on how exiles bring their old life with them.109 In this two-channel video work, Jacir recorded normal, daily life inside businesses and shops in both the city of Ramallah and New York. She documented hardware stores, hair salons, coffee-houses, travel agencies and shwarma shops (Fig 20). The similarities of the settings make it difficult for the unfamiliar viewer to discern differences. Jacir demonstrates how old worlds are recreated in the new country. As was written in one review of this piece:

Their lives as pictured by Jacir evince perseverance in the face of oppression and prejudice. But in the same way that Jacir refutes media stereotypes, she also refuses to allow conflict to determine the identity of her subjects. Ramallah/New York is as much about continuity and exchange between communities, daily experiences and enjoyment as about defiance.110

One can only guess which is Ramallah and which is New York, so alike are the décor, the set-up, the objects, even the clothes. Jacir delights in the resulting melding of cultures that exile brings, investigated in Ramallah/New York. This phenomenon is typical of immigrant communities in general. One may think of Chinatown and Little Italy in New York, for example.

In the context of the Palestinian community there is something especially poignant, since in both settings the Palestinians are essentially in exile. Furthermore, what is interesting is that it also functions as a powerful statement on the homogenizing effects of globalization today. Jacir does this without taking a moral stand for or against. The work opens up the discussion to include heady questions of globalization, “exchange between communities” and so on.

This inability to feel at home, for which Jacir finds signs of in her hometowns of New

York and Ramallah, is expressed elsewhere by increasingly larger numbers of people and communities. Ideas of borders and nations and territorialism are under revision. The state of living “in exile,” whether by force or by choice, has become increasingly common in today’s world. The movement and displacement of people and goods has had an effect on the visual fabric of life. Ramallah/NewYork is a comment on this. Operating within a “post-national” era,

109 Roberta Smith, “Emily Jacir - 'Accumulations',” The New York Times, March 25, 2005. 110 Joshua Mack, “Emily Jacir: Accumulations,” Modern painters, (June 2005), pp. 111-112.

Jacir belongs to this effort to rethink values of nationalism and belonging. She does this by challenging the viewer’s assumptions of where, who and what they think they see. In

Ramallah/New York Jacir plays off the viewer's tendency to jump to conclusions and to misread images, exposing their prejudice in the process.

The Modern City, a Site for Collective Exile?

In Ramallah/New York Jacir is hinting at a broader issue, one that affects people everywhere. If we picture the cross-cultural world of today as a network of relations, then the identity of every particular space, landscape, nation or individual is shaped by its cross-cultural and transnational relations to others.111 There is no other place where this is more apparent than in the city. The modern city functions as conducive for a site to consider the implications of the migration of “people, goods and ideas.” A subject that seems to be very present in Jacir’s

Ramallah/New York.112

The modern metropolis, a source of aesthetic exploration for many artists, serves as an excellent ground for examples of a new “migrant aesthetic.” This is also apparent in the writing of cultural theorists at the end of the twentieth century. There are many examples, from the early

‘nineties, which employ poststructuralist theories of displacement to account conceptually for migrating people, goods and ideas within the so-called New World Order.113 For example, in

Migrancy, Culture and Identity (1994), cultural theorist Iain Chambers discusses the modern

111 Isabel Hoving, “Between Relation and the Bare Facts: The Migratory Imagination and Relativity,” in Durrant, pp. 179-190- (here Hoving is referring to the ideas of Edouard Glissant in Poétique de la Relation, Paris: Gallimard, 1990). 112 In this quotation Chambers is referring to a discussion of first and third world relations and not necessarily aesthetics per se. Moreover, I lifted the above quote not from Chambers’ book itself but from an essay from 2007 by Graham Huggan, a researcher of comparative postcolonial studies, in which he was essentially criticizing the limitations of Chambers ideas. If I have unfairly decontextualized an already decontextualized quote, I have done so in order to illustrate that a rich amount of material has already formed on the subject of migration within cultural studies. 113 Graham Huggan, “Unsettled Settlers: Postcolonialism, Travelling Theory and the New Migrant Aesthetics,” in Durrant, pp. 129-144.

56 metropolis in reference to the position of migrants as a useful metaphor with which to consider these urban spaces. He makes a claim that Western urban-dwellers may have more in common with migrants from the so-called Third World, than perhaps was thought:

In the extensive and multiple worlds of the modern city we, too, become nomads, migrating across a system that is too vast to be our own, but in which we are fully involved - translating and transforming what we find into local instances of sense…114

Chambers goes on to explain how in the context of the modern city we are all inducted into “a hybrid state and composite culture.” The result is the emergence of what Homi Bhabha called “a differential communality” and Felix Guattari referred to as the “process of heterogenesis.”115

Beyond questions of nationalism and identity, something fundamental is being addressed in Ramallah/New York. As a result of processes of colonization, globalization, the displacement of people, mass exile and migration, a change in the very visual fabric of our world has been brought about. This has led to a migration of aesthetic traditions and cultural influences. Mieke

Bal, cultural critic and theorist, has asserted that the site where migration and its aesthetic (in other words, "migratory aesthetics") is most conspicuously present, albeit in de facto invisible form, is in the inner cities.116 It is not by chance that Jacir’s video focused on urban settings rather than rural ones. Although that is not to say that rural landscape and society are not affected by these upheavals. The focus on cultural ties in an urban setting is perhaps to be expected, living as we do in an increasingly urbanized world. In both her hometowns of Ramallah and New

York, Jacir operates as both insider and outsider, at home and adrift, in several worlds. The next chapter will address Bal's theory and consider works by Jacir that further explore the relations we have with the spaces we inhabit.

114 Iain Chambers, Migrancy, Culture and Identity, Routledge, 1994, p. 14. 115 Ibid. 116 Mieke Bal, “Migratory Aesthetics: Double Movement,” Exit # 32, November 2008 / January 2009, pp. 150-161

Figure 15 Emily Jacir, Christmas, 2000, postcard

Figure 16 Emily Jacir, Sexy Semite, 2000-2002, installation view, O.K Center for Contemporary Art, Upper Austria, 2003

Figure 71 Emily Jacir, Sexy Semite, 2000-2002, detail

Figure 71 Emily Jacir, Crossing Surda (a record of going to and from work), 2002, videostill, two-channel video installation, 30 min., VHS-Video, 132 min., S-VHS-Video

Figure 19 Emily Jacir, Crossing Surda (a record of going to and from work), 2002, installation view, two-channel video installation, 30 min., VHS-Video, 132 min., S- VHS-Video

Figure 20 Emily Jacir, Ramallah/New York, 2004-2005, 2 channel video, video still

Chapter Four:

The Migratory Aesthetics of Emily Jacir

Figure 21: Emily Jacir, Return, 2003, photograph, coffee from Palestine, 150 x 150cm

A Travelling Concept

Jacir’s work can be seen as part of an effort by artists, cultural theorists and writers to engage the (in)visibility of migratory culture.117 The term Migratory Aesthetics, was coined and first used by cultural critic and theorist, Mieke Bal around the beginning of the current century.118 It has since been adopted repeatedly in discussions of cultural practices especially

117 Bal, “Double Movement,” p. 150. 118 Bal, “Lost in Space," p. 23.

60 between migration and art-making. A recent example is the collection Essays in Migratory

Aesthetics edited by Sam M. Durant and Catherine Lord, to which Bal herself contributed the opening article.119 In the article she presents the problem of political correctness, identity politics and the paradoxes of locating either in a conceptual and literal space of migration.120 Much like the video art that Bal discusses in the essay, Jacir’s work is also anchored in movement; the movement of the artist in the world; the movement of media, images and voices; and movement as subject matter itself. Bal describes the world as one in which “mobility is not the exception but on its way to becoming the standard, the means rather than the minority.”121 However literal instances of movement and mobility alone do not always constitute “the migratory” in aesthetics.

In light of how often the term is now being used, Bal attempts to clarify again what this “non- concept” (her words) implies.122

Bal explains that one should not understand migratory aesthetics simplistically as referring to migrants or actual migration of people alone. Yet it does take this reality as a

“provisional circumscription” (of the concept of Migratory Aesthetics), in that mobility is a defining factor in the world in which we live. She recognizes that migration, and migrants, are very much a part of society today and sees this as a cause of cultural transformation. However, the term is more complex if we take its meaning literally, namely that aesthetics themselves are migratory. In Bal’s words: aesthetics are migratory, by their very nature, if we understand aesthetics as “a condition of sentient engagement.”123

In the essay “Lost in Space, Lost in the Library” she describes migratory aesthetics not so much as “a concept” but as “a modifier” for the notion of aesthetics itself. Bal describes this modifier as “a constructive focus of an aesthetics that does not leave the viewer, spectator or user

119 Eds. Sam M. Durrant and Catherine Lord, Essays in Migratory Aesthetics: cultural practices between migration and art-making, Rodopi, 2007. 120 Bal, “Lost in Space,” description from abstract of essay. 121 Bal, “Lost in Space,” p. 23 122 Ibid. 123 Ibid.

61 of art aloof and shielded, autonomous and in charge of the aesthetic experience.”124 This shifting of the importance of the viewer or “user” of art, and of the dynamics of the art-work and viewer relations is central.

It is more accurate to understand migratory aesthetics as a descriptor of the process of mediation between the viewer and art-work. Bal cites viewer-related contemporary-art theories such as relational aesthetics,125 empathetic aesthetics,126 and the notion of political art in general.

What these theories have in common is their “attempt to establish an active interface between viewer and art-work.”127 In other words, Bal offers a theorization of aesthetics based on an understanding that art-works are only fulfilled by the act of viewing (or by viewer participation as it may be more accurately described).128 Furthermore, Bal explains that this act of the viewer must involve “political work.” Bal maintains that the study of migratory aesthetics can help us relate to these three concepts. It is useful for understanding how exactly art is (or can be) politically effective.129

For instance, in reading the migratory aesthetics of a piece of art, one can relate to the art work and its meaning as shifting and moving as the viewer and cultural context changes.

Meanings are lost and created anew in the process of translation so to speak, and the viewer is called upon to do this political work Bal talks of. This makes the aesthetic experience performative. Bal states:

If aesthetics is primarily an encounter in which the subject, body included, is engaged, that aesthetic encounter is migratory if it takes place in the space of, on the basis of, and on the interface with, the mobility of people as a given, as central, and as the heart of what matters in the contemporary, that is “globalised world.”130

124 Ibid. 125 See Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, Paris: Presses du réel, 2002. 126 See Jill Bennet, Empathetic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art: Cultural Memory in the Present, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2005. 127 Bal, “Lost in Space," p. 23. 128 This idea of course is not new, for example see Rolland Barthes' 1967 seminal essay Death of the Author. 129 Bal, “Lost in Space," p. 23. 130 Ibid., p. 24.

Jacir is a good example of an artist who highlights today’s shift from a national to international and intercultural world structure. As Bal correctly reminds us, “provenance” (the place of origin) of an art-work has traditionally served art history. But what happens when art’s place of origin is not clear? As has been demonstrated here, Jacir’s work is at once from the

Middle-East and the United States, the Arab world and the Western world. At the same time, as

Bal asserts, there is no such thing as art from nowhere. All art work is site-specific in a sense.

The site of Jacir’s work then is situated in this very in-between-ness. Bal calls for a practice of art-making that sees globalization as such a problematic, that takes it as a starting point from which to create and work.131 If Jacir’s work is site-specific, then it is located in the specificity of what Bal would call, the globalizing movement of people itself.132

Bal discourages the reader from immediately falling back on, by now, familiar arguments and thoughts of globalization. She views the idea of globalization as in fact a “hindrance” when trying to understand migratory aesthetics and cultural studies as a whole. Bal infers that under the banner of so-called globalization one finds examples of a kind of neo-imperialism, of exploitation and “new colonization after de-colonization,” and this is to be avoided.133 She goes on to also warn of the difficulty with the notion of context because, along with globalization, these concepts both now fail to take into consideration and account for mobility. In art practices today, often provenance can no longer be “taxonomically identified.” This, she explains, is the migratory of aesthetics.

Migratory aesthetics can also be applied to certain formal strategies of artists in their ability to animate (or mobilize) the artist-artwork-viewer dynamic. For example in Where We

Come From Jacir presents a fragmented narrative of many different stories. This fragmentation exists in terms of place, time, self and other, including the viewer. It therefore represents an

131 Ibid., pp. 25-26. 132 Ibid., p. 26. 133 Ibid., p. 25. (In a footnote here Bal suggests reading Gayatari Spivak’s writing for further discussion on this issue, specifically her 1999 critique).

64 example or instance of migratory aesthetics. Such a device is described by Ihab Saloul, a young

Palestinian cultural critic based in the Netherlands, as “drifting story-telling,” in his analysis of

Palestinian cinematic representation.134 The idea is also useful in describing Jacir’s work.

Migratory aesthetics in general lends itself very well to artists who deal with what Saloul describes as “exilic narrativity.” Jacir often adopts this drifting narrative model, as a strategy in order to engage and involve the viewer/participant all the more in the content of the work and its message. In doing so the artist not only evokes but projects exilic displacement onto the viewer.

The Problem of Audience

The nature of the “migratory” in Jacir’s projects can be felt in the different (at times conflicting) levels of meaning that arise in her work, when seen by different audiences and in different places. The message itself then is migratory. For example, the work From Paris to

Riyadh: Drawings for my Mother has had several distinct audiences. When shown in the West it invited serious political discussion about repression of women in the Arab world. When seen by women coming from places like Riyadh it was seen as humoristic and light-hearted. Jacir has described these differing responses:

Well, I had a hard time with the drawings “From Paris to Riyadh.” … people want to turn the piece into something which it is not. One artist said: “I don’t see the terror and fear your mother experienced…” She was not terrorized; it was a simple, matter of fact way to bring her “Vogue” magazines into the country. Nothing more nothing less. In fact, when my mother and a dear Lebanese friend of hers who also lived in Riyadh saw the piece exhibited, they laughed and laughed. They thought it was hilarious!135

Jacir is very much aware of this issue in the reception of her work. In the same interview she expresses a kind of regret at exhibiting Where We Come From in the U.S. and Europe. When shown in the West the artist thinks the piece faltered. Jacir said: “Looking back, I think showing

134 Saloul, “Exilic Narrativity,” p. 114. 135 Rollig, Belongings, p. 19.

Where We Come From is a failure in some way. I am not sure how to reconcile the notion that non-Palestinians are being entertained by our sorrow and our dreams…”136

One could argue that the protest at work in the piece is not lost at all in the new context.

In presenting this work to non-Palestinian audiences, Jacir exposes the difficulty of the

Occupation to them and contributes to their comprehension of the complicated reality. Similarly to Azadeh Saljooghi’s interpretation of the performative quality in Crossing Surda and From

Texas with Love, when viewing Where We Come From the audience in the West become witnesses as the stories Jacir has collected, are revealed. This entails responsibility and provokes the “political work” Bal describes.

Jacir’s works have had this “problem” of audience from the start. Her earliest attempts as a student, when her medium was still primarily painting, contain a layering and multitude of meanings. The Graduation Show of her Masters in Fine Art degree (specializing in painting, received in 1994, at Memphis College of Art in the States), included large-scale semi-abstract paintings that had Arabic words woven into the layers of paint. Dark and expressive, to anyone not fluent in Arabic they seem serious and political, even angry (Fig. 22). In fact they included mundane words such as falafel. The artist admits these were there as “secret jokes,” jokes that only people from the Arabic community were privy to.137 This reflects a concern that the artist had even then, towards varying audience responses to her work.

The artist seems interested in experimenting with audience specificity and differing reception of her work in different settings. For example, when she displayed Where We Come

From in New York, she chose to hang a letter written by one of the people whose request she had fulfilled, addressed to the occupiers of his family’s former home. The letter appeared in

Hebrew without translation so that “only the occupiers could read the letter.”138 In contrast, in

136 Ibid., p. 9. 137 Rollig, Belongings, p. 19. 138 Ibid., p. 9.

66 the case of the tent in Memorial to 418 Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and

Occupied by Israel in 1948 the artist made a conscious decision to have the names of the erased villages appear in English despite their being Arabic names. The language functions on an international level, directing the work to viewers outside the Arabic community. The audience in

Jacir's art work is a component of no less importance than the imagery or text. In her manipulation of shifting and changing multi-cultural audiences, Jacir exposes something of the limitation of varying viewers' perspectives.

In a world in which there is no longer a clear-cut cultural identity for so many, Bal proposes that the notion of cultural-specificity should be replaced with “multi-culturally specific.”139 If art is one of the means through which we can explore this complicated state of the world, then the current ubiquitous state of “displacement” is the place to begin understanding culture and what it means to be human today. Jacir as an artist not only deals with the subject of displacement, but creates an experience from it. She does this through her engagement with the viewer. In the works discussed throughout this study Jacir displays an ability to playfully utilize the migratoriness of aesthetics, employing strategies such as “drifting story-telling” and audience participation. In doing so the work embodies the politics and aesthetics of displacement.

The Relational Aesthetics of Emily Jacir

In 2003 Edward Said wrote a short text dedicated to the work of Emily Jacir in response to Jacir’s project Where We Come From (2001-2003). His words provide theoretical backing to this central piece in Jacir’s oeuvre. In this text, presented first in the magazine Grand Street, Said seemed most impressed with the artist’s conceptual undertaking. Jacir credits Said in turn as being “one of the most important and powerful influences on me and my work.”140 Said of course, is arguably the most well known and respected Palestinian scholar of the twentieth

139 Bal, “Lost in Space," p. 32. 140 Rollig, Belongings, p. 17.

67 century. His cultural analysis, especially his ideas on Orientalism and post-colonialism, resonate strongly to this day. His writing goes far beyond the scope of Palestinian issues alone. Therefore his contribution here to writing on Jacir, albeit succinct, is noteworthy.

Said discusses Jacir’s ability in the work to reduce the messy complicated state of being that state-less refugees such as Palestinians experience, into something that can be grasped and understood. He explains how the artist achieves this first by posing such a simple question as a starting point (ie: What can I do for you in Palestine, where I can go but you cannot?) Then Jacir continues to successfully produce a clear-cut representation of the complex situation, in the execution of the piece itself. Said sees the formal means with which Jacir presents the work- its juxtaposition of image and text- as “wish and wish fulfillment and wish-embodied.”141 He observes “(The) writing and image (are) elegantly brought together with a clarity that most

Palestinians cannot experience in the present.”142 He goes on to draw a parallel with the formal logic of the work with that of the passport, both function on the base of juxtaposition of text and image.

This strategy, that Said so appreciates, is in fact a well known artistic mode, especially in conceptual and performance-based art.143 Text-based scores, instructions, and performance notations were common in the work of Fluxus and in Happenings in the sixties, used by the likes of artists such as Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci and Yoko Ono to name a few.144 Artists often presented a few simple lines of text relaying instructions alongside the documentary evidence

(often photographic) of the outcome after the said instructions were fulfilled. Jacir acknowledges

Nauman as an influence in the interview in her monologue Belongings.145 The difference here is that the text, the “instruction,” comes not from the artist’s mind but from her fellow Palestinians

141 Said, “Emily Jacir,” p. 106. 142 Ibid. 143 For further discussion of the use of text in conceptual art see Liz Kotz, Words to Be Looked At, Cambridge: The Mit Press, 2010. 144 Ibid, p. 175. 145 Rollig, Belongings, p. 9.

68 to whom she addressed the original question (“What can I do for you”). Perhaps this is why

Jacir’s form of conceptual art is often described as neo-conceptual. Early conceptual artists and

Dadaists and Surrealists, Duchamp for example, introduced external influences such as chance, into their work, as part of an experimental investigation into the possibilities of art.146 Later generations went on to develop these ideas further. By now there are many contemporary examples of artists who allow chance to dictate the direction of their work, for instance French artist Sophie Calle. In Jacir’s work, the artist likewise relinquishes control by encouraging her audience to provide the content of the piece. The music played in From Texas with Love for example, came from requests made by the audience. The accounts of the experience of creating

Memorial to 418 Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948 came from the thoughts of the participants who turned up to help at Jacir’s studio. In Material for a Film the viewer weaves his own path through the masses of material and so on. Granting greater power to the viewer, Jacir has been creating a form of interactive and increasingly relational art.

The term "Relational Aesthetics" is famously attributed to curator and cultural theorist

Nicholas Bourriaud. He applied it in his attempts to theorize a new generation of artists whose art actively engages the public and audience, mainly art from the 90s. In his 2002 book

Relational Aesthetics Bourriaud champions the kind of art produced in the late twentieth century by artists such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Rirkrit Tiravanija, while grappling with the philosophy of thinkers such as Louis Althusser and Felix Guattari.147 These practitioners of art create the kind of work that require participation and function on the basis of social inter- relations. Jacir shares a similar mode of operation, especially in the politically driven content of their work and its engagement of the audience. This kind of art is often immaterial and bases

146 For introductory discussion of chance in art see Andrew Bogle, Chance in Art: A Summary Anthology of Chance, Indeterminate, Aleatoric, Stochastic and Random Processes in Art, Auckland: University of Auckland, 1979. 147 Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, Paris, Presses du réel, 2002.

69 itself on human interaction and communality. Emily Jacir belongs to a generation of artists, who operating at the end of the nineties and into the twenty first century, have internalized this theory of Bourriaud’s and can be seen as practitioners of relational aesthetics. The basis of this kind of art is formed by inter-subjectivity and takes as a central theme the idea of being-together. A collective processing of meanings occurs when the viewer engages with the art-work. Art of this nature will always be directed towards the social context and the inter-personal relations formed there.148 Bourriaud sees this as no less than a revolution in the aesthetic, cultural and political purposes of modern art.149

Documentation and Art in the Public Sphere

As with earlier generations of performance-based, experimental art (such as Land Art,

Fluxus and Happenings) a natural step for these artists has been making art in the “real world” outside the walls of the gallery or neutral spaces of the museum. Jacir has been doing this from the mid-nineties. In Change/Exchange (1999) she walked the streets of Paris and performed her conceptual undertaking in the small exchange shops around the city. In Christmas (2000) she created greeting cards and placed them for shoppers to find in real shops. In Sexy Semite (2000-

2002) she published in the newspaper. In Where We Come From (2001-2003) and in From Texas with Love (2002) driven by requests given by her audience, she went out into the world, on the road, to perform the tasks. Yet all these works returned to the gallery in the form of documentation of some kind, usually photographs, video and texts.

Exhibiting in the gallery is a practical form of mediation, as a way to report back to an audience. As is characteristic of much performance work, most viewers are not actually present for the act itself and must rely on secondary accounts to learn of the work. These can be verbal or written accounts, photographic documentation or the presentation of physical remnants from

148 Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, p. 15. 149 Ibid.

71 the performance. This has resulted in an increasing sophistication of performance-based photographic, documentary practice.150 In fact, many performance-based artists have gone on to become more known for their video-art. Roselee Goldberg, curator and historian of performance art, discusses this in her book Performance Art: from Futurism to the Present. She writes:

"Performance videos of the nineties were frequently enacted in private, exhibited as installations and considered extensions of live actions."151 There are many precedents of such works from contemporary performance and video-artists such as Mathew Barney, Paul McCarthy and

Marina Abramovitch to name a few.

Jacir puts a considerable amount of thought into the documentary side of her work- as the often polished photography and thoughtful framing and hanging indicates. Her documentation is sold as art-work in its own right, through her New York and London based galleries. But I would assert that the motivation for these projects is still in the performance of the task, the activist and interactive aspects of the work, rather than the documentary (and more commercially viable,) side of the work. For example in a 2008 piece Untitled (servees) Jacir created a public sound piece that was to be site-specific that is non-translatable, to a gallery space.152 The work was made to be installed at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem and comprised of the recorded voices of taxi drivers calling out the names of no longer reachable destinations. She said of the work:

Untitled (servees) is meant to be experienced aurally in a specific place and would not be able to be shown outside of its context or location. The only way to show this work outside of Palestine is as a documentation of a site- specific project that took place.153

In part, the return of these performance-based projects to the gallery may have to do with a practical need to earn a living and to establish her reputation as an artist. For it is easier to produce and sell duplicates of a photograph, something tangible, and to present documentary

150Roselee Goldberg, Performance Art: from Futurism to the Present, London: Thames and Hudson, 1979, 1988, and 2001, p. 222. 151 Ibid., for a discussion of performance-based photography practice, especially since the nineties, p.222-225. 152 Servees is the local Arabic slang word for the small white minivans that commonly serve as means of public transport in cities in Israel and Palestine, commonly referred to as Sherut in Hebrew. 153 Laidi-Hanieh, “Destination: Jerusalem Servees,” pp. 62-63.

70 evidence of performance in a conventional exhibition space.154 That Jacir displays willingness to

“compromise” in this way is typical of many artists active today. As they operate within a market-dominated field, they must be pragmatic as well and provide their galleries with something to exhibit and sell. But again I would assert that their primary interest lies in taking their art to the streets, "out there," to operate in the realm of “real life” and not the ivory tower that the gallery affords.

That the location for Untitled (servees) was chosen carefully by the artist is proof of this.

As Jacir continues to explain in the interview, Damascus gate or Bab il Amoud, not only stands at the beginning of the road leading to Nablus and Damascus but in the past it had been the site of the main hub of Jerusalem's transportation infrastructure. Jacir collected sound-recordings from

Servees drivers, calling out the names of destinations no longer reachable from Damascus gate.

Once, buses were able to drive from there to Beirut, Kuwait, Baghdad, Gaza and other destinations but over time the freedom to travel by road from Jerusalem to these destinations has gradually been eroded in the name of security. The drivers' voices, calling out these names, are like ghosts from the past. In situ, the sounds become eerie to passersby, especially from the older generation, who may remember when such travel was still possible.

The artist describes the importance of site specificity to the project. The affects of the piece are more poignantly felt in the public sphere, where the viewers (or listeners in this case,) are going about their everyday lives. There is no doubt, that the work would lose some of its power if placed in a gallery:

The calls of the servees drivers are a sound which is disappearing from our contemporary landscape. The final piece is a 20-minute audio track of their calls which when installed on site blend into the sounds of the city. If you happen to walk by when it is the call for Beirut or Baghdad or Gaza you would really notice something uncanny, given the impossibility of such

154 This is not to say that immaterial art works are not sold on the art market, sometimes for large sums of money, as the practice of artists such as Tino Seghal for example, demonstrates.

destinations from Jerusalem today, otherwise it just sounds like servees drivers calling out everyday destinations.155

Art historian, curator and writer Adilah Laidi-Hanieh (who curated and wrote about work by Jacir) brings up the writing of philosopher Jaques Rancière, in relation to Untitled

(servees).156 According to Laidi-Hanieh Jacir’s work Untitled (servees,) is exemplary of the original works of political art that Rancière defends in his writing on political aesthetics. As

Hanieh explains, at a time when political art is often criticized, Rancière writes of the importance of it and asserts that political art at its most effective must induce a kind of dissensus in its public. This involves “the reframing of the field of subjectivity…the political interpretation of the uncanny.”157 Hanieh describes it as the creation of “a fissure in the order of the sensible.”158

With these thoughts in mind, I would like to present a short case study of the apparent censorship of another public art project titled Statzione, a project that was also made to be site- specific. It is ironic that is has only appeared in mock-documentary form, in photo-shopped images. The incident provides an example with which to touch upon larger issues at stake here, namely the future direction of the institution of art, the place of the art community and the role of art today.

Stations (and Nations)

As I described in the introduction, Stazione was to be Jacir's contribution to the Venice

Biennale in 2009. By now events such as the Biennale have come to include “non-Western” artists. Artists, such as Jacir, are categorized according to country and region. In Jacir’s case she is labeled most often as “Palestinian” and “Middle-Eastern.” The ideological rhetoric of art

155 Laidi-Hanieh, “Destination: Jerusalem Servees,” p. 62. 156 Adila Laidi-Hanieh ran the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre in Ramallah from its 1996 establishment until 2005, there she collaborated with Jacir. Her first book Palestine Rien Ne Nous Manque Ici was published in 2008 in Paris and Brussels (Cercle d’Art Revue). It is a cultural review of contemporary Palestine, which commissioned texts and art work from confirmed and emerging artists, novelists and poets from Palestine. 157 Jacques Rancière, ThePolitics of Aesthetics, New York: Continuum, 2004, p. 63. 158 Laidi-Hanieh, “Destination: Jerusalem Servees,” p. 61.

71 institutions manifests itself especially well in the context of mega-exhibitions such as the Venice

Biennale.159 However, exhibitions within this context have at times attempted to subvert this logic. This was the case with the exhibition ILLUMInations, the international art exhibition at the

Venice Biennial in 2009, curated by Bice Curriger.

In the catalogue of ILLUMInations, Curiger poses the following five questions to all the participating artists from the Biennale’s national pavilions:

Is the art community a nation? How many nations are inside of you? Where do you feel at home? Which language will the future speak? If Art were a state, what would the constitution say?160

It bodes well for the art world that these kinds of intentionally provocative questions are being asked today. Curiger is essentially questioning the spurious nature of the national pavilions. The

Venice Biennale attempts to represent an updated report on contemporary art from as many nations across the globe as possible. Ironically, this approach leaves little room for aspects of multiculturalism. It is apparent now, that this classification of artists by country is problematic, even arbitrary. Yet each year the list of participating countries grows, as the globalizing world still adheres to a nationalistic order. The system does not take into account factors such as the homogenizing effects of globalization, the complexity of identity politics and the nomadic lives lead by many leading artists themselves.

The restrictive system of categorization by country does not adequately represent the practice of artists today, or the nature of life in an increasingly globalized world. This objection goes beyond the already problematic fact that wealthy countries - generally Western ones - have their own longstanding pavilions in the Giardini and the means to participate, while poorer

159 For a discussion of the universal pretensions of mega-exhibitions see Tony Bennett, The Exhibitionary Complex, Thinking about Exhibitions, eds. Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne, Thinking about Exhibitions, London: Routledge, 1996. 160 Bice Curiger, International Venice Biennale Art Exhibition, Marsilio Editori spa, 2011.

74 countries cannot afford to showcase their contemporary artists.161 According to the Venice

Biennale's official website, several countries participated for the first time in 2009 including

Andorra, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, and Haiti.162 Palestine has yet to be granted a pavilion.

The issue of Palestine at the Biennale highlights the problem of the system. Between

1947 and 1948 the organizers of the Venice Biennale were preparing to add another national pavilion to the Giardini. It was to be a Pavilion for Palestine, assigned to the official representative of the Palestinian government under the British Mandate. As Jean Fisher, respected writer on contemporary art and post-coloniality dryly observed, it was to be represented by a group of solely Jewish artists sponsored by influential Italian Jews.163 By the time the Biennale opened, the pavilion was presented as the Pavilion for Israel, the newly formed state. Only years later, in 2002, the possibility of a pavilion for Palestine was tentatively raised again by Francesco Bonami, the curator of that year’s Venice Biennale. According to Fisher this proposal was promptly rejected. Despite this, Bonami decided to include a piece anyway by artists Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, called Stateless Nation (Fig. 23).

Stateless Nation saw seven-foot-tall blow-up replicas of travel and identity documents, issued to Palestinians, “dispersed” between the pavilions. Other than being a statement on the disrupted lives of Palestinians in exile and at home, the work “spoke also to the paradox of globalization where borderless movement of capital and a minority of the world’s elite are inversely mirrored by the rise in restrictive border controls and mounting numbers of dispossessed refugees and detainees."164 Much like most of the work by Jacir discussed so far, this project also succeeded in transcending the personal/political. Subversive by nature, perhaps

161 Kate Deimling, “Resculpting Lebanon's Constitution at the Venice Biennale: A Q&A With Curator Georges Rabbath,” ARTINFO France, April 8th 2011, http://www.artinfo.com/, viewed July 4th 2010. 162 http://www.labiennale.org/en/Home.html, viewed April 30th 2010. 163 Fisher, “Voices in the Singular Plural,” p. 789. 164 Ibid., p. 790.

75 this was one of the projects responsible for setting the tone in the following years for the increasingly self-conscious Biennale.

Stazione

Jacir was invited to participate in the exhibition Palestine c/o Venice held during the 53rd

Biennale of 2009. As Palestine is not granted a pavilion, the exhibition was to be an off-site addition. It was part of fringe events surrounding the official festival. Jacir’s proposed project

Stazione was to be a subtle, public intervention, meant to draw attention to the city’s past ties with Arab culture. As Jacir has done in the past, she approached this project by researching the context and site of the Biennale - namely the city of Venice itself. Encouraged by the obvious influences of the East in the architecture of the city, she delved into the city’s past and discovered many connections. For example she read that the first book published in Arabic was printed in Venice, and that the ancient Murano glass blowing craft is thought to have originated in the region of Palestine, most likely brought to the city as a result of trade routes.165 Once again

Jacir seems to have been exploring ideas reminiscent of Mieke Bal’s investigation into

Migratory Aesthetics.

Jacir devised a simple public intervention: She proposed to add Arabic translations to the names of the stops, on public signs along the main route of the city’s canal system. Appearing along the central route of the Vaporetto (water bus), the words were to be stenciled next to the existing Italian and English writing. The Arabic script was to be added using the same font, size, color and material of the existing signage, so as to best blend in (Fig. 24). The work was to be temporary, for the duration of the Biennale alone. It was to quietly infuse a sense of dissonance into the urban, multi-cultural spaces of today’s touristic Venice. The flowing Arabic script both

165 Glass is thought to have been invented by the Phoenicians around 50 BC somewhere along the Syro-Palestinian coast.

76 formally complimenting, and culturally contrasting with, the surrounding architecture and water of the canals.

Jacir's proposed public intervention was at first accepted but shortly before the opening the permit was abruptly withdrawn. An unsatisfactory compromise was proposed. Jacir was allowed to hand out maps of the Vaporetto lines with the Arabic inserted in the map instead of on the ground (Fig. 25). Later on Jacir exhibited this map along with photo-shopped mock-ups of how the work would have looked.166 The disappointed artist was given very little information about the reasons for the project cancellation, but assumed that it was out of some sort of political discomfort.167 The case invites speculation considering the context. It was not all that long ago that, in the Biennale of 2005, that German artist Gregor Shneider’s proposed replica of the Ka’ba in Mecca for St. Mark’s Square was cancelled. There is a precedent in Venice for censorship of work relating to Islam and Arab culture.168

All the artist could gather was that the Vaporetto company had “received pressure from an outside source to shut it down for political reasons.”169 The company claimed that the problem was with the city authorities in Venice. Jacir spoke to the Vaporetto Company in person but she couldn't get any clear answers.170 “Oddly,” she said “the man I spoke with mentioned the attacks on Gaza last December and said that this played a role in shutting down the project as it made the parties involved in the project nervous. I find that completely bizarre, as the work has nothing to do with Gaza.”171

166Alberto Peola Gallery, Turin Art Fair, Turin, 24th April 2010. 167 Regine, “Emily Jacir in Turin and Uncensored This Time,” http://www.we-make-money-not- art.com/archives/2010/04/emily-jacir-at.php. viewed April 30th 2010. 168 Nato Thompson, “Interrogating Public Space, Creative Time Presents: Emily Jacir,” February 2010, http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2010/publicspace/interrogating/2010/09/emily-jacir-july-2009/, viewed April 30th 2010. 169 Regine, “Emily Jacir in Turin.” 170 Ibid. 171 Morgan Falconer, "Emily Jacir," Art Monthly, April 2009, Issue 325, pp. 22-23.

Once again Jacir’s work suffered from the political essentialism that so defines the media representation of her aesthetics. Read within the context of a group exhibition of "Palestinian" artists, during an event organized around the principle of national boundaries, her work was perceived as being too provocative. It was dismissed as having some vague, threatening agenda, causing the authorities involved enough discomfort to cancel. But what of the Venice Biennale’s response and that of the local press and public? Perhaps most disappointing in this case is the fact that the public response was very minimal. At the time, there were no articles in the press clarifying the absence of Jacir’s project.172 One noticeable exception to this is Jean Fisher's excellent essay "Voices in the Singular Plural: ‘Palestine c/o Venice’ and the Intellectual under

Siege." In response to Palestine c/o Venice she analyzes how the question of Palestine has haunted events in Venice. Fisher asserts that “whether or not the cancellation of Stazione originated in local, strictly Italian politics, it nonetheless played into the hands of Israeli and pro-

Zionist policies of isolating Palestinians and the Palestinian narrative from the international community.”173

This whole debacle is sadly ironic. The point of Stazione and the exhibition Palestine c/o

Venice was not about asserting fiercely nationalist sentiments. The opposite in fact was true. On the contrary, Jacir's project alone and the exhibition as a whole, strived toward an art and aesthetic "unfettered by geopolitical boundaries and exile."174 Mikdadi and the artists she involved in the exhibition used their Palestinian perspective to shed light on issues such as

"space of memory, displacement, migration, nation and the human condition."175 They did this in order to open up these matters in an attempt to re-value ideas such as nationalism.

172 Regine, “Emily Jacir in Turin.” 173 Fisher, “Voices in the Singular Plural,” p. 799. 174 See Salwa Mikdadi’s Curators Statement online at: http://www.palestinecoveniceb09.org/curatorstatement.html 175 Mikdadi, curator’s statement.

This incident is a clear reminder of how the art world is not free from political pressure.

The integrity of the Venice Biennale has been repeatedly called into question by its own curators and artists. What is not exhibited, what the thousands of visitors streaming through every two years do not see, is just as indicative of the state of art and museums today as the art that is given a stage. Through art and activism Curiger's "art nation" can assert itself and suggest reasonable alternatives to an anachronistic system. That Stazione was cancelled is a direct reflection of this faltering system.

No Man's Land

Jacir is not alone in this struggle. Recently two Israeli artists, Maayan Amir and Ruti

Sela, constructed a floating gallery off the coast of Israel, in “extraterritorial waters,” including a conference space as “a forum for questions of boundaries and identity.”176 The project came about as a result of the artists trying to solve a problem related to this issue of nationalism and art. They were looking for a neutral space to show various artists from conflict areas around the

Middle East and did not want to exclude or offend anyone. The artists envisioned a politically neutral platform for critical thinking on the problems of nations and borders worldwide.177 The artists were essentially expatriating themselves for a brief period on that boat. This further eases the ability to go “beyond a local, personal starting point towards more global thought.”178

There are many such artists who like Jacir, are part of increasing efforts to identify and articulate a new culture which is coming into the world, following globalization.179 As Fisher

176 Alice Pfeiffer, “Probing Boundaries in Extraterritorial Waters,” New York Times: International Herald Tribune, June 23, 2011, p. 54. 177 Ibid. 178 Ibid. 179 Amir Khatib, European Union Migrant Artists Network, in lecture describing theory of “Third Culture,” the idea being in-between several cultures led to a hybrid, novel identity (screened during the ex-territory project, June 2010).

79 concluded at the end of her article on the Palestine c/o Venice exhibition of 2009: “What remains to be fought for is basic human rights to homeland, security and freedom of self-expression and self-determination, increasingly translated not in terms of nineteenth-century nationalism but as the bio-political struggle for diverse ‘forms of life.’” Fisher thinks that artists like Jacir have recognized this reality and are the ambassadors of this shift, ready and willing to move on.180

As I conclude the writing of this study in the summer of 2012, a project is about to be opened at the Tate Modern in London, Tania Bruguera’s Immigrant Movement International, part of the Tate’s series The Tanks: Art in Action.181 (“The Tanks” are among the world’s first museum galleries permanently dedicated to live art). The on-going art project - an “artist- initiated socio-political movement” - focuses on “the question of what it means to be a citizen of the world.”182 Much like the work of Jacir, this project and the series as a whole, is grounded in the act of ‘doing’ – Bruguera calls this ‘behaviour art’. According to the museum’s website the goal is to create art that does not merely deal with “politics or society, but that is actually a form of political or social currency, actively addressing cultural power structures rather than representing them.”183 The works and the exhibitions discussed throughout this study evidently paved the way for further investigation by artists and the art institution today, into issues of migration, human movement and post-global identity. These are now central to contemporary artistic debate. In this context Jacir’s work from 1998-2009 can be revisited and seen as belonging to a form of ‘useful art’ being developed in society at large today.

180 Fisher, “Voices in the Singular Plural,” p. 801. 181 The Tanks at Tate Modern: Tanya Bruguera, Immigrant Movement International, Tate Modern, London, 7th August – 15th August 2012. 182 “Tania Bruguera: Immigrant Movement International,” http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern-tanks-tate- modern/exhibition/tania-bruguera-immigrant-movement-international, viewed August 4th 2012. 183 Ibid.

Figure 22 Emily Jacir, Church of the Nativity, 1994, mixed media on paper, 236cm x 226cm

Figure 23 Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, Stateless Nation, Venice, 2002

Figure 24 Emily Jacir, Stazione, stazione (Rialto Mercato), 2009, digital c-print on aluminium, 18 1/4 x 27 1/2 in, 46,4 x 70 cm

Figure 25 Emily Jacir, Stazione, 2009, map

Conclusion

Figure 26 Emily Jacir, Embrace, 2005, Rubber, stainless steel, aluminum, motor and motion sensors, 50 x 179 cm diameter

The findings of this study reveal that positioning Emily Jacir within the landscape of contemporary art is not as simple as might first appear. She is both a Palestinian artist, and a Western artist, an Arab artist and a Woman artist. She is “in-between” several worlds. The first chapter explored Palestinian art and how Jacir operates as a “Palestinian artist.” It demonstrated that the artist's being "out-of-place" greatly informs her process.

The issue of where an artist is born is less pertinent than it once was, it is even irrelevant at times, to establishing who they are as artists and what defines their work. It is within this context of a destabilization of essentialist theories of nationalism and identity that Jacir operates. The existing accounts of Palestinian art teach us that post-Naqba Palestinian artists are defined by a lack of homogeneous style and interests. Jacir's work further disrupts any dominant narratives, successfully evading clichés and refuting prevalent stereotypes of Palestinians. The chapter looked at how Jacir practices a more inclusive, relational approach in her art one that is cosmopolitan and multi-cultural.

The second chapter concentrated primarily on critically analyzing the narrow reception of the artist's work, which has often been clouded in prejudice. This dominant reception has not adequately recognized the multiple levels of meaning in Jacir's work, many of which go beyond the artist’s local and personal Palestinian experience. A careful reading of works such as

Material for a Film, From Paris to Riyadh: Drawings for my Mother and Linz Diary revealed a wider scope of artistic interests and concerns. These include: a reflexive investigation into the medium of film; installation and interdisciplinarity; an on-going investigation into the nature of the archive; the possibilities of viewer-art-work relations; a dialogue with past and contemporary art history and finally her observations, from her own exilic perspective, concerning today’s increasingly global world.

The third chapter discusses the complex, dialectical nature of the state of exile which seems to be characterized by a sense of displacement, a kind of double consciousness and a refusal to “feel at home.” Jacir's work in response to exile, demonstrates a no-less significant interest in the wider implications of travel, transport and

(im)mobility. In other words, the exilic perspective afforded to Jacir, opens up her work to questions pertaining to human movement and displacement. Apparent in works such as

Crossing Surda (a record of going to and from work), From Texas with Love and

Ramallah/New York, the state of exile (like her status as “Palestinian,”) affords insight to artists such as Jacir, as she operates as both “insider” and “outsider,” acting as she is at home and adrift.

The fourth chapter applies theories of migratory and relational aesthetics to the artists work. It considers Jacir's work as art whose context or site is in-betweeness. It explores the possibilities of the migratory and performative in her work as formal as well as conceptual strategies, relating to the shifting of meaning and audience specificity. Bal’s writing on Migratory Aesthetics was of particular importance to the discussion. The chapter discusses the documentation of Jacir’s performance-based work, made originally

84 to be site- and time-specific, and opens up questions of intent and the political effectiveness of art. It demonstrates that Jacir’s work is more action- and community- based although the documentation that primarily serves as a form of mediation, stands as art in its own right. The chapter concludes by analyzing the censorship of the project

Stazione during the 2009 Venice Biennale. Beyond asking why Stazione was cancelled this chapter questions what the implications of this incident are on the nation-based logic of the Biennale. The Biennale functions here as a representation of the field of contemporary art as a whole, thus I argue that this logic needs to be (and is being) reexamined.

Postscript: Embrace

In the Venice Biennale of 2011 Jacir was invited to take part in the Biennale's largest

Pan-Arab exhibition of contemporary art that year, The Future of a Promise (curated by Lina

Lazar).184 The artist installed a work dating from the period I have been investigating here,

Embrace, 2005. It is a kinetic sculpture, a circular, knee high conveyor belt, fit with sensors that respond to movement (Fig 26). The structure and material are familiar to us, from the luggage conveyor belts at baggage claim in airports. An interactive machine, it starts to rotate when approached and is performative in its ability to activate its audience. The viewer approaches and backs off repeatedly, testing the mechanism, in a dance that mirrors the traveler or migrant who leaves and returns. A sisyphic shuffling back and forth movement ensues, between object and viewer as between traveler and countries.

The title Embrace personifies the object in a way, evoking circling arms of loved ones, at departure gates and arrivals in airports across the world. In this (literally and figuratively)

184 The Future of a Promise, 54th Venice Biennale, 2nd June-20th November, 2011.

85 moving metaphor, Jacir pairs down the sadness of goodbyes and the happiness of reunions. It recalls the excitement of new beginnings and world travel and conversely the piece evokes the fear felt by the dispossessed and displaced. Such conflicting emotions, rise from the multi layered work.

Embrace captures something of that which has interested me in this artist's work. My intentions here were to contend with issues of multi-culturalism in a post-national era. Initially I was drawn to Jacir's work with its contrasting layers of meaning, as it serves as an excellent ground for thoughts on such subjects. This study has attempted to test the observation that Jacir's in-betweeness affords her insights. It is this very ambiguity that reveals a truth about peoples' and artist's identity today. That is, that at this point in history we are all, for the most part, in- between different countries, spaces, cultures. Studying post-1948 Palestinian artists particularly illuminates this. Furthermore, choosing to write about this artist in particular was a political choice on my part, stemming from a frustration at the lack of dialogue and cultural interchange between Israelis and Palestinians within Israel/Palestine. Art can encourage us to imagine the world as encompassing many different identities and cultures that coexist. Through strategies of relational and migratory aesthetics, I believe that many of Jacir’s projects generate communication and dialogue, allowing the viewer not just to imagine but to experience and embrace the world as such a place.

Virtual Exhibition

RETURN

Emily Jacir

At the Jacir palace, Bethlehem:

Location: Jacir Palace Intercontinental (ancestral home of artist Emily Jacir), Bethlehem,

Palestinian Territories.

(Wall text)

The works presented in this virtual exhibition span a decade of work by artist Emily Jacir. Best known for her overtly political work concerning the plight of the Palestinians, her practice is no less informed by a peripatetic, international lifestyle, her perspective as a Palestinian more cosmopolitan than local. Jacir is both outsider and insider, simultaneously adrift and at home. In response to this state of “in-betweeness,” beyond questions of nationality and belonging, Jacir explores issues of transience, travel, space, the movement of people, mobility, and the restriction of movement. This exhibition aims to focus on these aspects in more depth. The works chosen are not limited to the local and personal, touching upon broader complexities of life today.

Merav Berkeley - 2012.

(Catalogue essay)

Return

The works presented in the exhibition Return span a decade of work by artist Emily Jacir. Best known for her overtly political work concerning the plight of the Palestinians, her practice is no less informed by a peripatetic, international lifestyle, her perspective as a Palestinian more cosmopolitan than local. Over the decade or so investigated here, she has lived in Paris, Texas,

New York, Linz, Rome, Jerusalem and Beirut. Since childhood she has been shuffling back and forth, moving for education, work and later on taking part in artist residencies and international biennials all over the globe. This roaming lifestyle has greatly informed her work. Jacir is both outsider and insider, simultaneously adrift and at home. In response to this state of “in- betweeness,” beyond questions of nationality and belonging, Jacir explores issues of transience, travel, space, the movement of people, mobility, and the restriction of movement. This exhibition aims to focus on these aspects. The works chosen are not limited to the local and personal, touching upon broader complexities of life today.

The artist, often described as “living and working between Ramallah and New York,” comes from a Christian Arab family originally from Bethlehem. On the busy and dirty Hebron Road, a main street of Bethlehem, opposite graffiti scrawled walls with the words “free Palestine” and a painting left by British street artist Banksy (of a little girl holding up an IDF soldier with an M16 rifle) you will find the ancestral home of the artist. To this day the grand building is named 'Jacir Palace'. It was built in 1910 by Suleiman Jacir, great-grandfather of Jacir and ex-mayor of Bethlehem at the time. Commissioned by him and built by local craftsmen in the traditional style of an Arab household built around a spacious inner courtyard, it was meant to house Suleiman and his five brothers, their wives and children. According to the artist, in Israeli tourist information one is led to believe that it was built by “Ottoman merchants.” This piece of misinformation is typical of

88 what some define as a systematic denial and repression of the Palestinian narrative. Today Jacir and her family cannot return, this exhibition provides but a virtual homecoming.

Today the building functions as a hotel, one of the largest and more exclusive in the city, owned by the international chain of Hotels Intercontinental. That the site of the exhibition is a hotel is conceptually extremely fitting for presenting work by an artist who deals with themes of transience, fleeting and temporary residence and travel. That the house once belonged to the family returns Jacir's work to a discourse of Palestinian loss and rights. At the same time the context of “hotel” keeps this "return" a fleeting, temporary one. In other words, the setting of a hotel serves to heighten the focus on the migratory aesthetics that Jacir often deals with.

The main challenge in placing an exhibition in such a setting is that the existing decor and ornate design of the building visually dominate the space, and contrasting contemporary art with such an environment is not easy. The intricate stonework, plaster carvings and wrought iron details lends a

"busy" opulence to the palace that is the opposite of the neutral “white cube” of the modern gallery space. Competing visually with such surroundings may easily lead to an unsettling visual dissonance. The curatorial approach therefore is for the pieces in the exhibition to blend in, rather than contrast, with the existing decor. Visitors will have to explore and discover hidden gems and surprises, the experience of the exhibition then will be a kind of treasure hunt or detective investigation. Photographs and drawings by the artist are implanted into existing frames, replacing in part the hotel’s decorative art work. Other works are immaterial - video or sound based pieces that do not so much clash with the hotel but amplify certain atmospheric effects. A parallel could be drawn with this subtle yet invasive presence with that of the persistence of Palestinians to continue to exist in an environment that attempts to marginalize, if not outright deny, their presence, history and future.

Often misunderstood and criticized as being one-sided, anti-Semitic and "too political" until now,

Jacir has suffered an altogether too narrow reading of her work. The world at large and the art- world specifically, has pigeon-holed this artist, reducing her to "Palestinian artist" and her art to

"art about exile" and in doing so has run the risk of missing the point of her ambiguous, layered pieces. This exhibition attempts to rectify this state of affairs, regarding Jacir's work with fresh eyes, new connections are made between pieces, new meanings arise as a result of this new syntax and a plethora of extra-Palestinian concerns appear. The exhibition is not concerned with pin- pointing Jacir to one place or community but rather exposes the in-betweeness of her perspective.

It is perhaps conversely this awkward position that has afforded Jacir with much of the insight and clarity with which she approaches and makes art.

(Order of Works in Space)

Part 1: Entrance and Lobby Return Return Embrace Untitled (self-portrait)

Reception The Church of the Small sitting room on ground floor Nativity From Texas with Love Part 2: Inner Courtyard Lydda Airport Landing Untitled (servees) Where We Come From (detail) Jebel il Sheikh Pause Persistence Part 3: First Floor Corridors Change/Exchange Roam Everywhere/ Nowhere

Part 4: Gardens Gather Ballrooms Conference rooms Communal areas

A Virtual Tour: (continuation of catalogue text)

Part 1 – Return

Jacir’s practice often borders on community-based activism taking place outside of a studio or gallery space. This places her work in that blurred space that exists between art and "real life" her practice exposes the fact that any such boundary is illusionary. In the spirit of this approach, the exhibition starts on the street outside the hotel. On the threshold between the public domain of the noisy street and the gate leading into Jacir Palace, a recreation of Jacir's 2003 C-print photographic documentation titled Return- after which the exhibition takes its name. It appears on the concrete pavement, showing footprints that fade as they progress, form a circle starting and ending in a puddle of spilt black coffee "from Palestine" as the artist described. The coffee is a reference to the home perhaps, as a domestic everyday occurrence, around which there has developed a whole culture of ceremony and hospitality in Arab culture. This poetic gesture becomes a metaphor for the exile who can never fully escape his/her origins. Exiles, forever pining for the lost homeland, revisits the site of the original loss, although the journey changes them, their identity fading as it is replaced by a new hybrid, multi-cultural sense of self. The symbolic placing of the piece at the threshold between the public and private sphere gives visitors cause to pause as they enter. The footsteps lead towards and then away from the entrance. This mirrors Jacir's flitting "between

Ramallah and New York" or more accurately "between Palestine and the rest of the world," trapped as she is in a perpetual cycle of leaving and returning only to leave once again.

Upon entering the lobby one is greeted by Jacir's 2005 kinetic sculpture Embrace. The structure and material are familiar from the luggage conveyor belts at baggage-claim in airports. An interactive machine, it starts to rotate when approached and is performative in its ability to activate its audience. Upon encountering the object viewers are compelled to approach and back off repeatedly, testing the mechanism, in a dance that mimics the traveler or migrant who leaves and

90 returns. A sisyphic shuffling back and forth movement ensues, between object and viewer as between traveler and countries. A tiny manifestation of this peripatetic existence can be found in

Jacir's Untitled (self-portrait) (1998) placed on a built-in pedestal in the entrance hall. It is an olive wood camel - of the sort sold to tourists in the Holy land- its hind legs wrapped exaggeratedly in packing tape. It has a pathetic, comic quality that reflects a sense of humor and irony in the face of hardship that Jacir often employs. The relational focus of Embrace, in its engagement of the viewer, can be found throughout the exhibition. For example the early painting Church of the

Nativity (1994) is a dark, expressive, largely abstract piece Jacir completed as a student. It is layered with graffiti-like text in Arabic. To the uncomprehending eye, the flowing script becomes another visual element emptied of its meaning; the picture conveys a sense of seriousness and anger. In fact the words that appear are "inside jokes" silly words such as "Falafel", put there by the artist for fellow Arabic speakers. As a student in the Sates at the time of its completion, Jacir was playing with differing possibilities of audience reception, aware that as the context and audience changes so too do meanings that may arise from her work. By placing this piece behind the reception desk- which is always manned by a member of the hotel staff, there to help guests with inquiries - non-Arabic speaking viewers will be able to inquire into the meaning behind the script that appears. Thus the work functions as a starting point for cross-cultural dialogue, one in which non-local viewers are confronted with their own quick (and often wrong) assumptions. This is true too of From Texas with Love (2002) the last in this group of works. Situated in a darkened room off to the left side of the entrance it consists of a one-shot moving frame of the open road. It was filmed from the dashboard of a car, as the artist drove uninterrupted on long desert highway in

West Texas, as she was completing a residency there in 2002. The landscape rushing by is an almost reckless celebration of freedom of movement. Meanwhile its soundtrack is made up of 51 musical requests made by Palestinians inside the territories during the second intifada, in contrast with Jacir these requests came from Palestinians in "the territories" who at the time, knew no such freedom. The eclectic musical tastes reflected in the compilation demonstrates the heterogenic

91 nature of any community - dispelling stereotypes in the West and Israel alike, of Palestinians as either rampant terrorists or helpless refugees.

Part 2: Landing

The impact of immaterial elements, especially sound, is continued into the second part of the exhibition. The inner courtyard is infused with a cacophony of sounds. The tranquil atmosphere, with its huge skylight, fountain and spaced out seating arrangements, is charged with intermittent rumblings of propeller airplanes, taking off in Jacir's 2009 video installation Lydda airport.

Alongside this noise, as viewers pass under the arched gateway that leads off the central stairways leading to upper and lower quarters of the house, voices of drivers calling out the names of destinations once reachable from Jerusalem and Bethlehem can be heard. It is no longer possible to travel to these places, as it once was, because of heightened restriction on movement in the region. These voices calling out to places such as "Baghdad" "Gaza" "Damascus", become then ghosts voices from the past. Originally this piece was made to be site-specific. Jacir strategically placed the sound piece under the arch of Damascus gate, a major transportation hub in Jerusalem, where passersby were confronted with the uncanny sounds, amidst the regular shouts of drivers calling out their "real" destinations. In the context of the exhibition these voices have been moved from their "natural" environment, and the sense of defamiliarization that the original piece produced is magnified. Surrounding these sound based works in the courtyard are four of Jacir's photographic works, placed into frames that are nearest four speakers on the surrounding walls and replacing the hotel's decorative art. Their position next to the speakers gives these still images an audio accompaniment. This group of pictures serves as an audial index to themes of travel and transience. A pile of clothes and belongings packed by a mother for her son appear in the first photograph (a detail from her acclaimed series Where We Come From (2000-2003)). In the next, titled Jebel il Sheikh, a ski lift and fake snowman are seen, garish in the bright sunshine and conspicuously non-snowy hills of the Hermon skiing site. In the third – an image Jacir calls

Persistance - an abandoned rusting shell of a bus, standing stranded in a field appears. Finally the fourth photograph titled Pause is an image of a pile of sandbags on a concrete block at an army checkpoint. Something in the still life is reminiscent of the piles of rocks that are left by Buddhists for example in the east, to mark a place where travellers stop to rest. An ancient human ceremony, familiar also from tales in the bible, today adopted as a common secular tradition of backpackers roaming the Globe. With this visual reference in mind the conflict and tension of the checkpoint- as a forced place of stopping- is replaced with an idea of resting stations for weary travellers on long journeys.

Part 3: Roam

Jacir oscillates between work that is time- and site-specific (transient) and an object-based practice

(tangible) with an unapologetic political awareness. Raising questions that relate to the movement of peoples, the spaces which we inhabit, and the state of the world today. Her work serves to highlight the absurdity and injustice rampant in our late-capitalist, (post) post-colonial world. She tackles these heady issues with an emotional intelligence and humor that saves the work from falling into a category of the didactic. For example her highly conceptual series Change/Exchange

(1998), examines the repercussions of a life in transience, of how things are lost over time as people cross borders and live a life on the move. This series comprised of 60 photographs and receipts documenting an act of monetary exchange by the artist in exchange shops around Paris.

The amount is gradually depleted each time the artist repeats the action of exchange, until of the original 100 dollar bill she is left with a few dollars of loose change alone. The series is hung in long lines, taking advantage of the formal logic of the building- that is the four corridors of the first floor, that revolve around the inner courtyard below. In order to view the piece in its entirety the viewer will embark on a circular journey of these corridors on the first floor, roaming the halls as Jacir walked the streets of Paris. Lastly, along one of these corridors, behind a wall of glass, is

Jacir's large-scale sculpture Everywhere/Nowhere (1999). An 8 by 10 by 12 feet structure made up

94 of cardboard packing boxes wrapped in brown packing paper. The over-sized object dwarfs the viewer, the glass that separates between viewer's body and the object further heightens the sense of closed-off hermetics that the piece evokes. The structure illustrates the overwhelming burden of constantly having to pack and move, a joke on the saying "everything but the kitchen sink," an impossibly large box for an impossibly unstable existence.

Part 4 Gather:

The final part of the exhibition will consist of discussions, panels and workshops in response to the exhibition. Inspired by Jacir's community-based activism apparent in her more well-known works such as Where we Come From, and Memorial to the 418 Villages that were Destroyed,

Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948, the final part of the exhibition will attempt to engage the wider community in Bethlehem, as well as encourage cross-community and cultural interaction and dialogue, a component so missing from the daily lives of most Palestinians and

Israelis.

(Checklist)

Title Date Medium Size/ Image Duration Return 2003 C print 150cm x 150cm

Embrace 2005 Kinetic sculpture 50cm x 179cm

Untitled (self- 1998 Ready-made 7.5cm x 12.5cm portrait) sculpture

The Church 1998 Mixed media on 236cm x of the paper 226cm Nativity

From Texas 2002 Video – DVD 60 min. with Love MP3 – CD with 51 songs

Lydda 2007- Video and Model 5min. 21 Airport 2009 on table seconds.

Where We 2001- Photograph Dimension Come From 2003 variable. – detail

Pause 2003- C-print 26.5 x 57.5 cm 2009

Persistence 2003- C-print 76.5 x 57.5 cm 2009

Jebel il 2003- C-print Photo size Sheikh 2009 variable

Change / 1998 Photographs and Size of photos Exchange receipts variable

Everywhere / 1999 Cardboard boxes, 8 x 12 x 14 feet Nowhere packaging tape.

List of Illustrations

Figure 1: Emily Jacir, Change/Exchange, 1998, detail. Figure 2: Ismail Shammout, Whereto? 1953, oil on canvas , 95 X 120 cm. Figure 3: Adnan al Sharif, PLO Poster, 1978. Figure 4: Emily Jacir, Memorial to 418 Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948, 2001, refugee tent and embroidery thread, 250 x 300 x 365 cm. Figure 5: Tracy Emin, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, 1995. Figure 6 : Emily Jacir, Memorial to 418 Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948, 2001, detail. Figure 7: Emily Jacir, Memorial to 418 Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948, 2001, viewers gathering. Figure 8: Emily Jacir, Munir, Where We Come From, 2001-2003, detail. Figure 9: Emily Jacir, Untitled (Self-Portrait), 1998, toy camel and scotch tape, 7.5 x 12.5 cm. Figure 10: Emily Jacir, Material for a Film, 2005-ongoing, detail and Installation view, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2009. Figure 11: Emily Jacir, Material for a Film, Performance, 2006, documentation of performance. Figure 12: Emily Jacir, From Paris to Riyadh: Drawings for my Mother, 1999-2001, marker on velum, 246 sheets each 30.5 x 23 cm. Figure 20: Princess Hijab, graffiti, Paris Metro, 2010. Figure 14: Emily Jacir, Linz Diary, 2003, still from webcam and text. Figure 15: Emily Jacir, Christmas, 2000, postcard. Figure 16: Emily Jacir, Sexy Semite, 2000-2002, installation view, O.K Center for Contemporary Art, Upper Austria, 2003. Figure 17: Emily Jacir, Sexy Semite, 2000-2002, detail, installation view, O.K Center for Contemporary Art, Upper Austria. Figure 18: Emily Jacir, Crossing Surda (a record of going to and from work), 2002, videostill, two-channel video installation, 30 min., VHS-Video, 132 min., S-VHS-Video. Figure 19: Emily Jacir, Crossing Surda (a record of going to and from work), 2002, installation view, two-channel video installation, 30 min., VHS-Video, 132 min., S-VHS-Video. Figure 20: Emily Jacir, Ramallah/New York, 1114-1115, 1 channel video, video still. Figure 21: Emily Jacir, Return, 2003, photograph, coffee from Palestine, 150 x 150cm. Figure 22: Emily Jacir, Church of the Nativity, 1994, mixed media on paper, 236cm x 226cm.

Figure 23: Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, Stateless Nation, Venice, 2002. Figure 24: Emily Jacir, Stazione, (Rialto Mercato), 2009, digital c-print on aluminium, 46.4 x 70 cm. Figure 25: Emily Jacir, Stazione, 2009, map. Figure 26: Emily Jacir, Embrace, 2005, rubber, stainless steel, aluminum, motor and motion sensors, 50 x 179 cm diameter.

Bibliography

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Miller, Frederic P., Agnes F. Vandome and John McBrewster, eds. Emily Jacir. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Mueller, 2011. Modigliani, Leah. “The Hugo Boss Prize: 2008 Emily Jacir.” International Contemporary Art, Issue 102, Summer 2009. pp. 53-54. Moore, Anne Elizabeth. “Where We Come From: a Profile of Palestinian Artist Emily Jacir.” The Progressive, Vol.73, No.10, October 2009. pp. 37-39. Nancy, J-L. “Of Being-in-common.” in Miami Theory Collective, Community at Loose Ends. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Nicolin, Paola. “The Stories that will Never be Written.” Abitare, April 2009. pp. 65-68. Pfeiffer, Alice. “Probing Boundaries in Extraterritorial Waters.” International Herald Tribune, June 23, 2011. p. 54. Rancière, Jacques. The Politics of Aesthetics. New York: Continuum, 2004. Rawlings, Ashley. “Making Brave New Worlds.” ArtAsiaPacific, Issue 63, May/June 2009. pp. 98-106. Regine. “Emily Jacir in Turin and Uncensored This Time.” http://www.we-make-money-not- art.com/archives/2010/04/emily-jacir-at.php. Richard, Frances. “Emily Jacir: Alexander and Bonin.” Art Forum, May 2005. pp. 244-255. Robertson Wright, Jessica. “Contemporary Palestinian Art: Moving in from the Margins.” (article presented at DIWAN: A forum for the arts, 2006), Paper available at: www.arteeast.org/artenews/artenews-articles2006/jessica-wright/jrwright_paper.pdf. Rogoff, Irit. Terra-Infirma. London: Routledge, 2000. Rollig, Stella and Genoveva Rückert, eds. Emily Jacir Belongings, Works 1998-2003. Bozen: Folio Verlag, 2004. Rollig, Stella. “Emily Jacir: Interview.” In Emily Jacir: Belongings. Works 1998–2003. Stella Rollig and Genoveva Rueckert, eds. Bozen: Folio, 2004. pp. 9-19. Rosenberg, Karen. “Art in Review: Emily Jacir.” The New York Times, 20th November 2009. p. c31. Said, Edward W. After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Said, Edward W. “Emily Jacir.” Grand Street, No. 72, Autumn, 2003. p. 106. Said, Edward W. Out of Place. New York: Vintage Books, 2000. Said, Edward W. “Reflections on Exile.” Granta 13, Autumn, 1984. pp. 159-172 Said, Edward W. Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

015

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אוניברסיטת בן גוריון בנגב הפקולטה למדעי הרוח והחברה המחלקה לתולדות אמנות ותרבות חזותית

מעבר לגלות:

זהות ושייכות בעבודתה של אמילי ג'סיר

1998-2009

חיבור זה מהווה חלק מהדרישות לקבלת תואר "מוסמך למדעי הרוח והחברה" (M.A)

מאת: מירב ברקלי בהנחיית: דר רות איסקין דר רו ת

ב"תשע'אלול ה אוגוסט 2102

אוניברסיטת בן גוריון בנגב הפקולטה למדעי הרוח והחברה המחלקה לתולדות אמנות ותרבות חזותית

מעבר לגלות:

זהות ושייכות בעבודתה של אמילי ג'סיר

1998-2009

חיבור זה מהווה חלק מהדרישות לקבלת תואר "מוסמך למדעי הרוח והחברה"(M.A)

מאת: מירב ברקלי

בהנחיית: דר רות איסקין

חתימת הסטודנט: :תאריך חתימת המנחה: :תאריך "חתימת יו ר הועדה המחלקתית: :תאריך

תאריך הגשה: 2012 אוגוסט