Emily Jacir
A star is as far as the eye can see
and as near as my eye is to me
4 November 2014–23 April 2015
Opening: Tuesday 4 November, 6–9pm
Darat al Funun-The Khalid Shoman Foundation
13 Nadeem al Mallah Street
Jabal al Weibdeh
Amman
Jordan
Hours: Saturday–Thursday 10am–7pm
T +962-6 464 3251/2
darat [at] daratalfunun.org
www.daratalfunun.org
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Darat al Funun presents an extensive survey of select work from Emily Jacir’s oeuvre, including film and video works, installations, interventions, audio works, and sculpture. From Change/Exchange (1998) to Untitled (SOLIDARIDAD) (2013), the exhibition contains key works presented together for the first time, as well as several rarely seen works. This includes two site-specific works that have not been shown since they were created in 1999, Everywhere/Nowhere, and from Amman to Bethlehem (contraband).
The non-chronological presentation dispersed over several buildings of the Darat al Funun compound echoes the complexities and tensions articulated in Jacir’s work. Since the early 1990s, transformation, questions of translation, resistance, and the logic of the archive have been major currents throughout her practice. With restrained formal means and a sense of humour she gives a voice to people and stories that exist on the periphery of official historical narratives, with a focus on her own political, historical, and social relationships.
Her work ex libris (2010–12), commissioned for dOCUMENTA (13), commemorates the approximately 30,000 books from Palestinian homes, libraries, and institutions that were looted by Israeli authorities in 1948. For this exhibition, the artist will also present documentation from her 2002 installation Today, there are four million of us, which revisited the Jordanian Pavilion at the 1964/65 World’s Fair in New York. Lydda Airport (2009) is a film which takes place in the eponymous location in the mid- to late 1930s. The film was inspired by Edmond Tamari, a transport company employee from Jaffa, who received word that he should take a bouquet of flowers to Lydda Airport and wait for the arrival of Amelia Earhart to welcome her to Palestine. stazione (2009), a public intervention conceived for the 53rd Venice Biennale, created a bilingual transport route through the city that made visible Venice’s shared history with the Arab world. Punctuating the exhibition is a selection of the artist’s smaller-scale works, sketches, and documentations, reflecting the diversity of her practice.
The exhibition’s title is a poem by Gregory Corso that he recited in front of Jacir in Rome.
A fully illustrated bilingual English-Arabic catalogue with an essay by Adila Laidi-Hanieh will be published after the opening.
Emily Jacir is the recipient of several awards, including a Golden Lion at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007); a Prince Claus Award (2007); the Hugo Boss Prize (2008); and the Herb Alpert Award (2011). She is a professor at the International Academy of Art Palestine in Ramallah since it opened in 2006, and served on its Academic Board from (2006–2012). Jacir is on the faculty of Bard MFA in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. She lives in the Mediterranean.
Darat al Funun is a home for the arts and artists from the Arab world. Tracing its beginnings to 1988, it is housed in six renovated historical buildings with an archaeological site in the garden. Darat al Funun actively pursues its mission in providing a platform to contemporary Arab artists, supporting art practices and artistic exchange, and stimulating critical discourse and research. Visiting and artists-in-residence produce and show their work. Academics and artists give talks or workshops. Darat al Funun offers a Ph.D. fellowship, publishes books, organizes educational activities for young people, and opens its library, publications, films, and archives for research.
