(ZESTGlobal Member Ms Deepa reacts to the recent post on the food crisis in
Niger)
I was wondering why Niger is starving when they have mineral deposits and oil.
What I found interesting is why Australia suddenly cares enough to do an entire
article on the 3.6 million on Niger -- is it that they want a part of the pie
that is Africa?
Regards,
Deepa
----------------EOM-----------------
All for art's sake
By GUNVANTHI BALARAM
The Hindu | July 24, 2005
http://www.hindu.com/mag/2005/07/24/stories/2005072400200500.htm
If it weren't for Jack Persekian, there would be no art scene in East
Jerusalem.
JACK PERSEKIAN is the director of the Al-Ma'Mal Foundation for
Contemporary Art and runs the only gallery dedicated to contemporary
art in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. Through these two
organisations, the U.S.-educated accountant-turned-curator tries to
support Palestinian artists despite the volatile nature of their
environment. He has tried to give them a reason for staying in East
Jerusalem.
On an average day, Israeli West Jerusalem offers perhaps 17 different
films, eight concerts and ten art exhibitions. Palestinian East
Jerusalem offers almost none. "So, Persekian's work, though certainly
out of the mainstream, provides an uncommon life-source of culture to
the people in this part of the city," Tate magazine pronounced after
seeing his work there.
Strong and engaging
Persekian steers his private gallery, Anadiel, set up in 1992, and the
Al-Ma'Mal Foundation, a non-profit organisation set up with six others
in 1998, with unswerving resolve. "What began as a business with the
Anadiel soon became socially and politically driven," Persekian said
at the recently concluded Sharjah Biennial 7, of which he was head
curator. The exhibition was not flawless, but it was strong and
engaging, with 74 artists from 36 countries expressing their view of
"Belonging" an issue terribly familiar to the curator.
"I've grappled with the issues of identity and dislocation all my
life," declared Persekian, whose forefathers came to the Holy City in
the Fifth Century A.D. "My personal concern and investment in the
Sharjah Biennial stem from my identity, a person from Palestine, a
place completely torn apart. There's my Armenian descent, my Arab
identity, my American passport, and there's my encounter with the UAE."
Al-Ma'Mal (`workshop' in Arabic) runs programmes in community centres
and schools in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank as well as
artist-in-residency programmes, which take Palestinian artists to
India, Switzerland and England. And the Anadiel was where it all began.
"The Old City was dying, my father had just died, and our bookbinding
business was going nowhere. After the first Gulf War, the Madrid
Conference brought a glimmer of hope. People started to return. I
turned my father's workshop whose magnificent books sparked my love
for travel and for art into a gallery. I hoped it would provide a
decent livelihood; moreover, I wanted to contribute to the community
by sharing with it works of art that allow everyone to fly beyond the
walls surrounding them," Persekian muses. "Connections needed to be
made, voices needed to be heard, and, most important, opportunities
and resources needed to be provided for art to happen."
The budding curator ran from post to ancient post, from Nazareth to
Nablus to Haifa to Gaza, talking to local artists, begging for funds,
and organising one-man shows. Working with resident and international
artists on new projects soon became "an obsession", and finding
connections between their work and the context in which they were
conceived in this case, Palestine/Jerusalem the principal focus of
his curatorial work.
Letting in new blood
"As Jerusalem became more and more constricted, I felt this surging
need to let the world in, so new blood could be injected into the
local scene. The artists' interest in a dialogue with an environment,
a situation, combined with my enthusiasm for a visual/conceptual
discourse with the place, the people and the politics provided the
ingredients for realising works addressing social, political and
humanistic issues from firsthand experience."
1995 Turner Prize nominee Mona Hatoum, Nasser Soumi, Jumana
El-Husseini, and Susan Hijab are among those in the Palestinian
Diaspora who worked with Persekian, testing the internal Palestinian
discourse on forms of representation, reflections on identity and
modernity, the relationship to homeland, origins and history.
Persekian also succeeded in attracting international names, some of
whose works left a lasting impact: Beate Streuli's "East Jerusalem";
Jean-Luc Vimouth's "Café de l'Olivier"; Emily Jacir's "Where We Come
From"; Jean-Marc Bustamente's "Something is Missing Suspension";
Phil Collin's marathon dance-video installation, "They Shoot Horses",
the documentation of two groups of Palestinian youths dancing for an
uninterrupted 18 hours until they drop a work that deals with
heroism, collapse, exploitation, and the will to survive.
This continuing drive to gather artists from outside is Persekian's
attempt to surmount the barriers and walls being erected every day to
the point that mobility becomes limited to five-km stretches between
military checkpoints. "where one's further passage rests upon the mood
of an Israeli soldier," as he pointed put, his dark eyes flashing with
anger.
To apply balm on the collective wound inflicted by Israel, Persekian
hosted three joint Palestinian-Israeli group shows, "Sharing
Jerusalem", "Down with the Occupation" and "Home" at Anadiel.
"Communication is critical if we want salvation from this situation."
Constant difficulties
Though he is gratified at having resurrected the local art scene and
enabled young Palestinian and Arab artists to make the leap to the
global art platform, the curator is frustrated by the relentless
difficulties of working in East Jerusalem. Business is never rich,
plus it's always a "struggle" to bring artists in.
Has he ever wanted to leave? "I'm always leaving," he quipped with
black humour. Of course, he's always leaving to search for fresh
talent and support, address art seminars, to curate shows abroad. His
shows in Germany were reportedly successful. So was his Sharjah
Biennial. But he always returns. "Life is tough in Jerusalem. My
brothers, who live in the U.S., keep urging me to join them," he said.
"But Jerusalem is where my place is. I have a role to play in my
homeland, and I believe I stand a fair chance of seeing my ideas come
to fruition."
One of those ideas is to set up CAMP Contemporary Art Museum
Palestine. The museum will be a travelling exhibition featuring works
from the holdings of Al-Ma'mal and the Anadiel, as well as special
projects and commissions. It will be presented every year, at a
different international museum, with a visiting curator.
"We would like CAMP to reflect one of the core Palestinian experiences
displacement without illustrating a political narrative," says
Persekian. "Moreover, we hope to transform its nomadic status, which
reflects a tragic reality, into a lever for new opportunities and
dynamic multicultural productivity. The cross-fertilization between
CAMP and its hosts will be a way of engaging in creative discourse and
breaking down boundaries between different cultures and nationalities."
How long will their CAMP roam the world if and when it gets going?
Persekian's retort still stings: "As long as we have to wait for the
founding of the Palestinian State."
--
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