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New Gate, Old City
Jerusalem 91145
P.O.Box 14644
T: (+972) 2 6283457
F: (+972) 2 6272312 |
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The Artist-in-Residence Program:
The Artist-in-Residence program provides local and visiting artists accommodation and studio facilities in Jerusalem for the creation, presentation, development and exchange of creative projects. This program serves as a meeting place for artists, facilitating creative encounters and discussion forums that are open to the public community, thus activating communication between Palestine and the international world. In order to further encourage this exchange, we invite the artists in-residence to contribute to the Al-Ma’mal Workshops program, working primarily with youth on creative projects.
We provide the artist with accommodation, materials and fabrication assistance, a living fee, the round trip ticket to Jerusalem, 24 hour access to a work space as well as access to a darkroom, workshop facilities and office equipment to enable artists to produce and present their work in Jerusalem. Furthermore, we engage local institutions from Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah in cooperative activities with relation to the artist-in-residence program.
Upon prior agreement with the artists, selected artworks produced are safeguarded and form the Collection of Al-Ma'mal Foundation, which we aspire to develop as the nucleus of a Contemporary Art Museum – Palestine (CAMP). |
| Beat Streuli / Ayreen Anastas / Ayse Erkmen / Emily Jacir / Jananne Al-Ani / Luc Chery / Peter Riedlinger /
Phil Collins / Raeda Saadeh / Rosalind Nashashibi / Scarlett Hooft Graafalnd / Sobhi Zubaidi / Zeyad Dajani / Zoe Leonard /
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Zoe Leonard
1999
Zoe Leonard was born in 1961 in Liberty, NY and was raised in New York city. Her first exhibition was in 1979 at Fourth Street photo gallery in the East Village. For years, Leonard was involved with numerous grass-roots political organizations that were formed to fight for the rights of people with AIDS as well as the struggle to end sexuality and gender-based discrimination. In 1992 she had her first solo exhibition with her New York gallery 'Paula Cooper' and was included in that year's Documenta IX. Other solo exhibitions include: -Jennifer Flay Gallery, Paris. -The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. -Vienna Secession. -Kunsthalle Basel. -Philadelphia Museum of Art. Projects done with Al-Ma'mal: - 1999 artist-in-residence - 'Xposure' publication - a solo exhibition at Gallery Anadiel 1999
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Sobhi Zubaidi
1999
Sobhi Zubaidi was born in Jerusalem in 1961 and grew up in Jalazon refugee camp near Ramallah in the West Bank. In 1986 he received his B.A. from Birzeit University and, received an M.A. in cinema studies in 1994 from NYU. In 1996 he returned to the West Bank, where he founded refugee camp productions, which aims at offering support for local filmmaking. He has made several documentary and fiction features and many short films that have been shown internationally.
Filmography:
Crossing Kalandia, 52', Beta SP (Palestine, 2002).
Light at the End of the Tunnel (al-Dhou fi Akhar al-Nafaq) 47', (Palestine, 2001).
Looking Awry (Chawal) 29', Beta SP, (Palestine, 2001).
Ali & His Friends ('Ali wa Ashabhu) 12' (Palestine, 2000).
Women in the Sun, Documentary, 1998 (Palestine).
My Very Private Map, 20', (Palestine, 1998).
Projects done with Al-Ma'mal:
-1999 artist-in-residence
-"Deep Shit" Exhibition at Gallery Ganadiel 1999
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Beat Streuli
1999
Born in Switzerland in 1957, Beat Streuli studied at Kunstgewerbeschule Zurich and Basel, and at Hochschule der Kunste, Berlin. Over the last ten years he spent time in New York, Sydney, Zurich, and Dusseldorf. Taro Amano writes in an article entitled "The Doubleness of Character", published in Parkett, issue No. 54 – 1998/99, and translated from Japanese by Keijiro Suga, "The young people who appear in Streuli's work are photographed in most cases without prior consent. They do not know that they have become subjects. Nothing is particularly asserted in the work, especially about the nationality or gender of the young people. In addition, the backgrounds in these photographs (in particular town, on which streets) are de-emphasized as much as possible as if to evade any such assertions about Streuli's subjects." The differences in fashion, gender, and ethnicity in these photographs are not metaphors in the discourse on contemporary culture and cities, nor are they symbols to be mediated by already established cultural codes. these images are indices, so to speak, of the young character-subjects to denote simply that "such and so was here." Streuli takes a great care not to foreground "meaning" in his own work, and, by so doing, succeeds in transferring the semiotic feature of the photographs with their "crudeness". This is the reason that, looking at his photographs where everything is exposed, with neither hidden significance nor solid ground to fall back on, we find ourselves wordless, growing anxious. given that his photographs resist talking about a culture or a city, we may probably say that Streuli's work is a clear contestation against the symbolic reading of a city. Solo exhibitions include: -Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. -Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Torino. -Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. -Kunsthalle Zurich. -Sprengel Museum, Hannover. -Spiral Art Center in Tokyo. -Museu d'Art Contemporani, Barcelona. -Tate Gallery, London. Group exhibitions include: -Fondation Cartier -Museum of Contemporary Art, 'Gift of Hope', Tokyo. -Castello di Rivoli, 'Quotidiana', Turin. -Museum fur Moderne Kunst, 'Bondi Beach/Parramatta Road', Frankfurt. -Sydney Biennale, 'Everyday', Sydney. Projects done with Al-Ma'mal: -1999 artist-in-residence -'Xposure' publication - participated in the Al-Ma'mal photography workshop program -a solo exhibition at Al-Ma'mal 1999
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Peter Riedlinger
2000 & 2001
Peter Riedlinger was born in Loeffingen in the Black Forest (Germany) in 1966.
Although Riedlinger focuses his camera on themes in the immediate environment, his motives seem peculiar and distant. The fragmental view separates objects from their context, seemingly immaterial details attain a symbolic or emblem-like aura. These subtle gifts undermines the claim of pronouncing fundamental statements "over" the world and over the locations where he travels, be it Leipzig or Jerusalem. The perceived appears neither out of a removed distance, nor does Riedlinger insist on inspecting it too closely. Neither does a composed arrangement determine his perception nor does the transitory [character] of the snapshot cling to his pictures. One would be inclined to see in the [artistic] work of Riedlinger an experiment in a new simplicity which looks at objects without naiveté, being fully aware, however, of the crushing multitude of the already existing photographic pictures yet not allowing himself to be overpowered by them. (text by Ludwig Seyfarth and translation from German by Gaby Wallenstein)
Projects done with Al-Ma'mal: - 2000 & 2001 artist-in-residence - "Us/Them", solo exhibition at Gallery Anadiel 2001 - contributed as photography instructor in the Al-Ma'mal Photography Workshop (2001)
Between the years 1993 and 1998 he studied photography at the University for Design and Art in Zurich. During that period, in 1997, he also studied at the Academy for Visual Arts in Leipzig. From 1994 to 1998 he was grantee of the Markelstiftung, Stuttgart. In 1997, in the framework of the Prix Michel Jordi de Photographie in Geneva, he was awarded a promotional prize. He has participated in numerous exhibitions and festivals in Germany, Switzerland and Slovenia. In 1999 in conjunction with his solo exhibition at the Kunstverein, Leipzig, his picture series "Hero city/Heldenstadt" was published in book form.
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Ayse Erkmen
2003/1994
Ayse Erkman proposed to work with the Qalqilya Zoo, particularly with the stuffed/taxidermic animals there. What interested her, was the transformation of the Zoo into a natural history museum by freezing and saving life along with stories that are unfortunately/ sadly funny; "Brownie the giraffe dying while fleeing from the sounds of a gunfire, falling down and breaking his neck and ten days later his pregnant partner Rudi having a miscarriage because of sorrow and Brownie and his unborn giraffe son being stuffed to stand together in a special exhibition space inside the zoo."
Unfortunately, due to the political situation at the time and the impossability of entering Qalqilya in 2004 because of seizures and imposed curfews on Qalqilya by the Israeli army, Erkman could not realize this project. The project was therefore postponed to a later date.
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Ayreen Anastas
2004
2004
Ayreen Anastas was born in Bethlehem, Palestine after the Israeli occupation. Currently lives and works in New York.
Anastas' art practice engaes with issues of public and political space, language, and questions of Palestine. She was first invited to participate in the artist-in-residence program in 2004 (she later returned to screen her project in 2006).
Anastas proposed a project that would reflect upon the Italian director Pasolini's visit to Palestine in 1962 for his film "Seeking Locations in Palestine for the Gospel According to St. Mathew". The film project she produced titled, Pasolini Pa* Palestine turns Pasolini's script into a roadmap superimposed on Palestine's current landscape, creating contradictions between the visual and the audible, the expected and the real.
Images below are stills taken from Ayreen Anastas' video.
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Luc Chery
2002
Chery was involved in Al-Ma'mal's artist-in-residence program in 2002, participating in the Art Workshop program as art instructor, introducing Palestinian youth to the wide variety of materials within the context of contemporary art, particularly focusing on recycled materials and the creative possibilities available in working with such materials. The work of Chery titled, Les Habitats-Ode to the Refuge Camps, is a photographic work taken in Gaza of temporary structures, such as tents, shacks and other spaces enclosed by cloth or plastic sheeting. Parallel to Les Habitats was other work photographed in Bordeaux showing assemblages from discarded materials that Chery has put together in the course of the past years. He used old plastic, fabric, as well as furniture parts to construct small living spaces. Looking at the images of refugee camps alongside miniatures built by Chery, it is sometimes hard to differentiate between Gaza and Bordeaux. Both convey a sense of confinement to an enclosed space. It is a valuable distinction the artists sets before our eyes- that between when an object is waste and when it is priceless commodity.
The building of relationships between the object as waste, functional form, and object as a ‘beautiful’ composition is a successful attempt on Chery’s behalf to give recognition to the current Palestinian condition by conveying an empathetic picture of the nature of a people sheltered by such ‘waste’ structures through the very definition of the discarded materials.
Projects done with Al-Ma'mal - 2002 artist-in-residence -"Les Habitats" 2003 exhibition. -"Jerusalem ma ville" exhibition of completed works of trainees participating in the Luc Chery workshop at Al-Ma'mal, 2003. - contributed to the Al-Ma'mal Photography Workshops as photography instructor
images below are from the "Les Habitats" 2003 project.
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Scarlett Hooft Graafalnd
2000
Born in the Netherlands in 1973.
Scarlett initially came to Jerusalem (invited by Gallery Anadiel) as part of her continuing art academic studies. During her stay in Jerusalem in 1999-2000, Scarlett became interested in the historical meaning of the city, more specifically, in the three world religions that have their holy places within the old city of Jerusalem. She researched the ‘Jerusalem Syndrome’ phenomena that some travelers, as well as residents of the city experience. Individuals with this syndrome tend to have an idealized view of Jerusalem, and as a result, act in a bizarre and irrational fashion. They are literally intoxicated by the Holy City, and some are even declared temporarily insane due to the extreme measures of their religious beliefs.
In Parttime Human, Scarlett questions issues about ‘the real Jesus’, reacting to the madness on the commerce around his figure, while making references to the same kind of questions people suffering from the ‘Jerusalem Syndrome’ are dealing with. Scarlett created miniature figurines of sheep and Jesus heads made from natural olive soap, utilizing the same traditional soap-making methods produced in the Nablus soap factory. Scarlett filled the entire Gallery Anadiel floor with these sculptures, distributing them in bundles throughout the gallery space and visitors were compelled to walk around and in between the flocks of sheep led by the Jesus heads. Restricted in movement, the visitor, like the sheep figurine, was also being ‘led’ with deliberate and effortless fashion, and by this means, the sheep and those visiting the exhibition merged together as being one in the same, metaphorically speaking.
Graafland’s exhibitions include: Parttime Human, Gallery Anadiel, Jerusalem (solo 2000). Odradek ,The Populas Gallery, Tel Aviv (2000), and Sculptures of Justice, The Ministry of Justice, The Netherlands (1998).
Education: Minerva Academy, Groningen. Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The Hague. Post Graduate program in Fine Arts, Bezalel Academy, Jerusalem. Awards: -Magnum Traffic Art price 1999 -South Holland Art price 1999
Images courtesy of Gallery Anadiel from Graafland's exhibition.
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Jananne Al-Ani
2003
Born in Iraq 1966. Lives and works in London.
Al-Ani’s personal experience of displacement provided the inspiration for a number of creative projects, where she reexamines her Arab cultural background, which she had rejected out of hand upon leaving Iraq and arriving in Britain at an early age. Working in photography and video installation, Al-Ani’s early work explores issues around sexual and gender politics. Studying the representations and descriptions of Middle Eastern women by late 19th and early 20th century European photographers, travelers and writers, Al-Ani’s interest and motivating factors revolved around the representation of women, in particular, the fetishised oriental women in western art and photography; issues at the heart of the differences between east and west.
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Rosalind Nashashibi
2003
Born in London in 1973. Lives and works in Glasgow.
Nashashibi participated in Al-Ma’mal’s artist-in-residence program in 2003, executing a video work concentrated on the Dahiet al-Bareed neighbourhood, a small Palestinian neighbourhood outside of Jerusalem. In Dahiet al-Bareed, Nashashibi was interested in capturing the rhythm of a usual afternoon in the Arab suburb by giving attention to a particular sense of place, reflecting on the area as both hectic and slow, with a nervous and unpredictable energy; the burning piles of rubbish for example, are the most visible signs of such neglect mirrored by the fact that the filmed neighbourhood is a kind of no-man’s-land, without any real jurisdiction.
Nashashibi’s technique is a kind of watching and waiting, with the films being a testament to the presence of the watcher, as well as a record of what took place before the artist’s eyes. Her film work is always directed to her environment and the people in her immediate surrounding. She is concerned with developing an interesting relationship between the moving and the static on film; a relationship through time as well as space. Her subjects are pedestrians, cars, buildings, trees, and litter disturbed by the wind.
Exhibitions include: Palestine International Video Festival, Beirut (2002). Global Economy, Les Recontres de Video Arts Plastiques, Centre d’Art Contemporain de Basse Normandie. Getting Closer, La Centrale, Montreal. Oeuvres d’etre -works of being- opera d’essere, Temple Gallery, Rome (2001). True Matter, Constantine Bokhorov, Assembly Gallery, Glasgow (2000). New Work, Lime Gallery, CalArts, California (1999).
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Emily Jacir
2002
Born 1970. Lives and works in Ramallah and New York
Living between Ramallah and New York, Jacir’s residency time in Jerusalem in 2002 was utilized to create an artwork inspired by the very personal idea of displacement that so many Palestinians endure. Where We Come From/(Im)mobility is based on the artist’s “freedom of movement” as a Palestinian with an American passport. Jacir utilized her passport to access Palestine for Palestinians who are denied the freedom to go to their own homeland and/or to move freely within it. She asked them to send her their requests of what they wanted her to do for them, and with her “golden ticket” (her U.S. passport), Jacir was able to move freely, circumventing barriers and connecting people to their homeland, their wishes, their dreams. In the very act of connecting people to their homeland by fulfilling their requests, Jacir’s work ascertains and documents their disconnection as well.
Jacir’s desire is to shed light on the absurdity of displacement by showing the adversities exiles suffer over things that most of us take for granted, and in so doing, the artist reassembles the fragments of diaspora. Jacir identifies with the subjects by acting out their wishes (gestures), thus becoming an extension of their will: becoming them even, and it is in this way that her work reflects on the mobility of exile itself as a shifting form of identification, drifting from geographical displacements to psychic splits to moral contradictions. (Jack Persekian)
Jacir’s solo exhibitions include, The O-K Center for Contemporary Art in Linz, Austria in 2003, and at the University Gallery in Sewanee Tenasee in 2000. Jacir has participated in several group exhibitions that include, Veil, The New Art Gallery Walsall, England; The Museum of Modern Art Oxford (2003). Unjustified, Apex Art, New York; Submerged, Kunstbunker Nuremberg, Germany (2002). Made in Transit, Vacancy Gallery in New York (2001). Ekbatana, Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center, Copenhagen, Denmark (2000).</P>
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Phil Collins
2004
It all started I suppose with my writing to Jack Persekian. Jack is the director of the Al–Ma’mal Foundation in Jerusalem. But still, I didn’t know whether he’d be interested in my idea – to organize, execute and film a disco dance marathon in Ramallah, which would afterwards be exhibited as a real–time video artwork. In fact, I thought he’d hate it. Something so dumb and frivolous which spoke precisely about exhaustion, collapse and heroism but in a palette of Pop Idol colours. When we think about Palestine it never seems to be in reference to modernity, or culture; in fact, it’s relentlessly positioned as uncivilised. The disco dance marathon would instead be a way of looking at beauty under duress, entertainment in place of routine indignities. Ten days later and I’m standing in a community centre over the road from the local mosque with Iman Hammouri, the director of the Popular Art Centre, holding auditions where I play Beyoncé and Joy Division over and over. And the dancers – they’re heart–stoppingly beautiful. They take your breath away – shy and awkward but when they rock, they really flip out. I choose nine and I film two groups over successive days dancing to the same soundtrack, from northern soul to acid house, from “Love Hangover” to “Xanadu”, from 10am to 6pm without breaks. Or so I thought. I take the role of cheerleader, DJ, cameraman, bouncer. I’m like a one–man band but with more to do. Have you ever tried to dance for eight hours? It’s a killer. There’s a kind of madness or cabin fever which slowly descends upon a group. It’s insane. In the finished film they do aerobics, they do folk dancing to Gina X. Someone starts dry–retching at Aretha Franklin. They do belly dancing to The Smiths. Later on, they fall asleep to “Fame”. They’ve almost had it, stumbling about like drunks, bags under their eyes as Irene Cara rattles on in the background. It’s halfway through a Bananarama song in the second hour when we hear the first call to prayer which punctuates the video as we turn the music off and wait until it’s appropriate to put Primal Scream back on. I’d also not counted on the power cuts. On the second day, the whole of Ramallah goes down. We’re left sitting in a shuttered room with everybody telling me how this is completely normal, and would I like a piece of fruit? Except that I’m getting back on the plane the next day and I know that half the dancers have to get through checkpoints which close at nine. Of course I did have the piece of fruit, and also a silent nervous breakdown. The end of each day had me in tears. The dancers showed such fortitude, resilience, grace and, most importantly, had better, sharper moves than any I’d ever seen. I wanted everyone who saw it to fall in love with them, to admire their perseverance, and to wonder why it should seem odd to us if they knew the words to Althea & Donna’s “Uptown Top Ranking”. The last track they dance to is quite rightly Olivia Newton John’s “Xanadu”. For me there really is a heroism to live in a place it’s impossible to leave, to be split from families, imprisoned by a Berlin wall and, maybe worst of all, to be forgotten by a world which refuses to understand you.
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Raeda Saadeh
2001 & 2003
Born in Um Al-Fahem 1977. Lives and works in Jerusalem.
Raeda Saadeh first worked with Al-Ma’mal as part of the Workshops program and was invited to the artist-in-residence program in the autumn of 2002. Immaterial, is the title of Saadeh’s work created during her residency which concentrated on memory significance as represented through the imagery of youth. One entered the gallery space of Gallery Anadiel only to enter a children’s playground, full of sculptures depicting children engaged in typical outdoor childhood games- some children are skipping, some hanging in midair on a swing, others playing together on the sand-filled ground. The numerous sculptural installations, constructed of wire and clothed in usual children’s clothing are incomplete in physical form; relating to the artist’s reflection on the recalling of dreams, where dream characters may be difficult to remember or to identify clearly. Saadeh refers to children growing up on the streets, who are like dream characters; we know that they are there but we cannot recognize their faces or their identities as we consider them not to be important (immaterial).
Saadeh’s performance, photography and video installation work often deal with female sexuality in universal as well as personal terms, where the female body is dealt with in a most provocative and courageous way. The artist strips the imagery of the Orientalist imagination, (the veiled women in particular) down to its bare reality while challenging any interpretation drawn solely according to nationalized borders.
Exhibitions include, Immaterial, Gallery Anadiel, Jerusalem (solo 2003). The New Shehrazades, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona; ArtFocus, Jerusalem (2003). Le Corps comme Territoire, Rencontres Arles, France (2002). In weiter Ferne, so nah, IFA Galleries, Berlin (2001). There, School of Visual Arts, New York (2000).
Education: Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem - BFA & MFA (1997-2003). Exchange student at the School of Visual Arts, New York. 1995 - 1997 Menachi College for Arts, Khidera.
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Zeyad Dajani
2004/2003
In the mid-1960’s King Hussein of Jordan began building a royal palace in Jerusalem. The structure was conceived as two rectangles, intersecting at right angles, forming a cross along the North-South, East-West axes. Designed as a two-storey building, it was to allow for vast panoramic views from all directions. Strategically located on an elevated hilltop on the road to Ramallah, the palace would give a clear and uninterrupted line of vision across the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley to the Jordanian capital Amman, a sightline that symbolically bridges the two cities, crossing and uniting the landscape in between. Construction on the building stopped when Jordan was defeated in the 1967 war. The palace, the King’s ambition and desire to leave a legacy in Jerusalem, now stands abandoned and unfinished, out of time and place. It is an anomaly, iconically overlooking the city.
Out of Place came about during my residency with Al-Ma’mal in 2003. This was my first visit to Palestine having grown up a Palestinian in Jordan. (Zeyad Dajani)
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Our sincere gratitude to The Ford Foundation, The Khalid Shoman Foundation, the Jerusalem Unit, and the Belgian Consulate in Jerusalem for their continuous support and partnership.
All rights reserved © 2007 Al-Ma'mal - Foundation for Contemporary Art | Website design by Alquds Network
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