Curated by Katya García Antón and Lara Khaldi. Produced in partnership with Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation, Ramallah
Partners and venues:
- ’Abwein Municipality
- Al Ma’mal LAB
- Beit Aneseeh Restaurant and Bar, Ramallah
- Birzeit Municipality
- Birzeit University
- Centre for Jerusalem Studies
- Col∙legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya (COAC)
- Columbia Global Centers, Middle East
- Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP)
- Dhahiriya Municipality
- Educational Bookshop
- Evangelical Lutheran Church
- GalleryAnadiel
- Hajjah Village Council
- the Harb family
- Hebron Rehabilitation Committee
- Institute of Modern Media, Al Quds University
- Jamma’in Municipality
- Khalidi Library
- La Chataigneraie – Centre wallon d’art contemporain, Belgium
- the Mohammad Ghosheh family
- Radio Beirut
- Ramallah Municipality
- The Tile Factory
- Yabous Cultural Centre
In 2012 the Jerusalem Show was one of the programmes of the first Qalandiya International, the initiative of a group of Palestinian art and culture organisations conceived as a collaborative biennial event. The Jerusalem Show VI exhibition, ‘Gestures in Time’ was curated and coproduced with the Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation in Ramallah. Riwaq specialises in architectural research and renovation, and this sixth edition of the Jerusalem Show not only featured exhibition sites in Jerusalem but also villages and buildings across the West Bank where Riwaq works on renovation projects with village communities. Riwaq’s own contemporary art event, the Riwaq Biennale, had previously seen three iterations, and ‘Gestures in Time’ was not only the sixth Jerusalem Show but also the fourth Riwaq Biennale – and both were part of the first Qalandiya International. It was thus, as the catalogue said, “a gesture of collaboration and … an attempt to cross the dissected landscape of Palestine”.
As the curators stated: “‘Gestures in Time’ sets out to explore the individual gesture on an intimate, social, political, and aesthetic level. It seeks to regain the possibilities offered by the gesture in reclaiming society as atheatrical stage of individual engagement. … In the terrain of regulated conflict, which this exhibition inhabits …. the gesture can become a form of divine dissent – chaotic, wild, anachronistic, guttural, amorphous, and unregulated – requiring neither legitimacy from, nor attachment to, any recognised body of authority.”
Houses, community buildings, hamams, village centres, streets and ruins in Jerusalem, Ramallah and the West Bank villages of Birzeit, ’Abwein, Dhahiriya, Hajjah and Jamma’in were the locations for ‘Gestures in Time’.The manifold ‘gestures in time’ in these locations ranged from the outcomes of artists’ residencies and workshops, live as well as filmed and transmitted performative actions, to video projections, drawings, paintings and installations in the Old City. There was also a complementary programme of lecture performances, a symposium (‘Qalandiya Encounters’), talks and guided walks. ‘Gestures in Time’ was an experiment in expanding the different levels of collaboration, and extended beyond Jerusalem and Palestine in multiple ways.
Jshow VI Artists
- Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme
- Rheim Alkadhi
- Marwa Arsanios
- Erick Beltrán
- Victor Costales and Julia Rometti
- Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh
- Jumana Emil Abboud
- Matias Faldbakken
- Amjad Ghannam
- Ra’ouf Haj Yihya
- Lawrence Abu Hamdan
- Mohammad Al-Hawajri
- Wafa Hourani
- Quinn Latimer
- Bruno Munari
- Ciprian Mureşan
- Shahryar Nashat
- Tom Nicholson
- Uriel Orlow
- Cornelia Parker
- Amer Shomali
- Socratis Socratous
- Martin Soto Climent
- Nardeen Srouji
- Subversive Film
- Javier Téllez