Whatever your view on current affairs, it would be hard to deny that migration is one of the hottest topics in the news. The issue seems so large that it’s easy to forget that underlying the political debate are many individual stories and real-life problems which those people are currently facing. Any opportunity to contemplate the human side of the issue, and to hear what people who have recently migrated are feeling should welcomed as a chance to counterbalance the scaremongering and sweeping generalisations often portrayed in the media.
So the first UK survey of the Palestinian-American artist Emily Jacir at the Whitechapel Gallery is a must. Jacir has spent the last two decades using art to reflect on political, historical and biographical events through sculpture, film, drawings, large-scale installations and photography. In doing so, she has also dealt with her relationship with Europe, and the themes of migration and integration into a foreign society.
http://www.arts.ac.uk/alumni-and-friends/support-and-donate/ual-development-council/
Born in Bethlehem in 1972, Jacir has experienced a rather unsettled life, which is reflected in her work. She spent her youth in Saudi Arabia and moved to Europe to attend high school in Italy. She then attended art school in Memphis, and much of her work relates to a life spent alternating between exile, movement and normalcy, and considering what freedom means. Most importantly, Jacir uses her art to give a personal face to the Palestinian conflict.
Following Jacirs’ work chronologically, we see a personal timeline of events occurring or affecting her through life. In 1998, she broke from ‘traditional art’ and produced her first ‘performative’ work. ‘Change/Exchange’ explores the premise of translation and what is forever lost when items are transferred back and forth, in this specific case, the process of exchanging dollars into francs, and vice versa. After a number of exchanges (sixty if you’re interested), all of the paper money had gone, and only coins remained, which could no longer be exchanged. Jacir then started to explore more political ideas, and the cultural differences between the countries she’s lived in. This manifests itself in Jacir’s work tracing the outlines of models from Vogue magazines, and creating abstract patterns of the negative space. While the immediate reaction suggests this reflects negatively on Saudi Arabia where the ‘image of woman was banned’ it also reflects the West’s objectification of women. Jacir’s reaction was to feel ‘equally repressed in both places.’
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/visualarts/article4499559.ece
Other works from Jacir are much more hard-hitting and focused on the struggles faced by the Palestinian people. Material for a film is a large scale art installation focused on the Palestinian writer Wael Zuaiter, who was assassinated by Israeli agents in Rome. The tragedy was that the writer was mistakenly identified as being a suspect responsible for the murder of Israeli athletes in 1972. Jacir’s work looks at Zuaiter’s life through letters, photographs and documents relating to his death, and imagines a ‘life which is no longer there’. Another of Jacir’s most renowned works is “Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages that were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948” which tells the painful and poignant history of the Palestinian people.
Find out more at: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/
Making Statements With Art
Art provides a peaceful, but often powerful, means to make political and social statements. London has an excellent track record of providing funding, education and a platform for artists from around the world to express their views on the environments in which they live and work. This ability for the capital to encompass all styles and views of art is encouraged and supported by many patrons, including Yassmin Ghandehari, Michael Goedhuis, Sasan Ghandehari, Deirdre Hopkins JP, Nigel Hurst and Harold Tillman, CBE
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