Publications
The Jerusalem Show
Chapter 2: Details
CHAPTER 2
DETAILS
Site-specific Projects: Arab Catholic Scouts, Austrian Hospice of the Holy Family, Gallery Anadiel, Hammam Virgin Mary, Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Saint Francis Store, Patriarch’s Pool, The Swedish Christian Study Centre, and Nicola Zaphiriades’ Shop
Click the links below to visit each artist section:
Noor Abuarafeh, Hera Büyüktaşçan, Paul Devens, Rula Halawani, Jesper Just, Gülsün Karamustafa, Jonathan Loppin, Majd Abdel Hamid, Zehra Sonya, and Hiraki Sawa. (with Ceren Oykut).
A detail indicates a type of voyage that starts a voyage through the activation of memory. A detail always has the potential to become the evidence that gives further information about a state of a conflict, confrontation, struggle, calculation, adaptation, exclusion, occupation, acceptance, and resistance. Therefore, the primary point of convergence, which generates the whole conceptual frame of this chapter, is processing details in a flux of time segments. For this chapter, therefore, artists produced and/or re-shaped their existing projects in synch with their detail-based research and findings on mixed, discontinuous and dislocated structures, events, stories, and memories both of Jerusalem and overlapping cases from different geographies.
Rula Halawani's photography series Confused Memories (2014) is located at Hammam Sitna Mariam, and displays dreamlike landscapes of Palestine. In this abandoned venue, the artist processes the current state of Palestine with extracted memories from her childhood. Respectively, Noor Abuarafeh's work also resonates between the collective and the personal, by recalling the past on the bordeaux walls of the Austrian Hospice of the Holy Family, proposing a different perspective with which to read an archive based on personal stories. Abufareh does this by re-archiving her grandfathers' family archive of black and white photographs that were taken in Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt.
Jesper Just's video Installation Intercourses (2013) transforms the derelict Hammam Sitna Mariam into an architectural pastiche along with suspended screens from the domes of the building, bamboo, special LED lights for plants, and light bulbs left over from Ramadan. On three screens, the film monitors three men, interwoven within the scenes, by taking the city as the main character. The amalgamation of the past, diverging memories, obscured dreams, and lost stories operate together in this enchanted setting.
Hera Büyüktaşçan's work is based on research she conducted around the Patriarch's Pool: a project that focuses on one of Jerusalem's lost water supplies. By reviving the memory of the water with an architectural intervention at the emptied pool, The Recovery of an Early Water (2014) questions the social, political and historical memory of the city. Her entire research is also being documented and presented at Nicola Zaphiriades' Shop.
Hiraki Sawa, also presenting in Chapter 1, presents Migration (2003), which explores the fragile experience of reality – ever-changing, intangible, not easily outlined or defined. Sawa captures the sense of being nowhere, a continued displacement and migration: a relentless and transient home-making by investigating the different meanings of moving, travelling and changing places: of going beyond the border, or the gaps between things.
Jonathan Loppin and Paul Devens approach Jerusalem's local realities as outsiders; from different points of view, they observe, witness, and underline what has been repeated on a daily basis not only in the city, but in the country itself. Devens' site-specific sound-based installation Drop (2014) at the Center for Jerusalem Studies- Al Quds Courtyard, takes the act of 'listenig' as 'specific, directive and political next to its everyday manifestations' through a sonic experience based on sounds movements and specific field recordings. On the other hand, Loppin performs Blocus (2014) with 50 objects, which were prohibited from entering the Gaza Strip by Israeli authorities (listed in 2010 by Gisha, an Israeli human rights association), first in Jerusalem and then in other Palestinian cities. Each performance leaves a trace through a video documentation that will be accumulated at the Swedish Christian Study Centre during the Jerusalem Show.
Ceren Oykut's extensive spatial installation Atlas of Interruptions (2014) at Hammam el-Shifa, is a modest intervention with light and shadow, and is presented alongside Carta-Magica (2014) at the Arab Catholic Scouts – Jerusalem: both of which respond to the realities of the city by hinging on its details. (Oykut is also presenting in Chapter 3, Intervals).
Gülsün Karamustafa's project The Bookbinder Lived and Worked in Jerusalem takes over Gallery Anadiel and reanimates a bookbinding shop by rediscovering traces of the past. Karamustafa customizes the shop by uncovering and adding old information with new materials. The echoing memories of the place are also carried by and with the visitors; they can be old friends of the shop or newcomers, sharing unspoken memories within the space.
Majd Abdel Hamid also uses a shop window at the same street. His work Hourglass #1 (2014) displays hourglasses in different sizes on a shop window in the old city of Jerusalem. The powder in this hourglass consists of crushed cement chipped from the Wall in the West Bank mixed with sand grain. In the same vein, Zehra Şonya's work Red Clouds (2014) located at Arab Catholic Scouts – Jerusalem, investigates the links between cities and personal memories as a way of reading history. Red Clouds is based on the idea of attempting to collect untainted memories and to overlap them with the untold stories of the old city of Jerusalem through the venue. Accordingly, the artist started her work by detecting and collecting stories from her memory. Then, she asked two people who speak Arabic and English, to retell her stories as their own, which are then processed through semi-transparent red clouds. The presence of 'light' in the work underlines an individual metaphysical approach by indicating the notion of hope and the act of healing.
The Bookbinder
Lived and Worked in Jerusalem
Site-specific installation
2014
Gallery Anadiel
When I first encountered the bookbinding shop of Mr Persekian, which was later turned into a gallery, I was extremely impressed. It had a strong soul of its own, and gave away many clues about who and what had lived in this space. It was as if the workshop could speak by itself about its humble and virtuous life, a life that started and ended fighting all the difficulties an unstable geography brings.
My project is an homage to a craftsman/bookbinder who skillfully tried to keep his books, as well as his life, bound together on such slippery ground, with all its migrations, wars and changes of regime.
On The Bookbinder
Gülsun Karamustafa's work reanimates a bookbinding shop by rediscovering traces of the past. Karamustafa customizes the shop by uncovering and adding old information with new materials. The echoing memories of the place are also carried by and with the visitors; they can be old friends of the shop or newcomers, sharing unspoken memories within the space.
This page contains some extracted notes by Karamustafa made during the research and production phases of her project. Her collage sketches, found diagrams and drawings are part of the installation.
Extracted from Gülsün Karamustafa's Notes
To-do list:
1. The shop will be cleaned, painted white and kept as it is.
2. The walls on both sides will be painted grey (1 metre height from the floor and 1 metre stripe to place the bookbinding images (as shown in the sketch).
3. The Paper Cutting Machine will be placed centrally in the middle of the shop.
4. Two windows will be kept untouched but cleaned. Two pots of symmetrical green plants will be placed in them and Mr Persekian's books and boxes will be displayed (as many as possible).
5. The signboard bearing the name of the shop and the project will be printed and placed in front of the shop as shown in the sketch.
6. The text will be produced and applied on the red painted panel…
– The text to be placed on the wall:
The Bookbinder
Lived and Worked in Jerusalem (1920-1988)
Mr Persekian was an Armenian Catholic. He was a bookbinder and a box-maker in the Christian Quarter. His grandfather was a baker with the Turkish army, the job that brought him to Jerusalem. Mr Persekian was born here and at an early age was run over by a cart on his way to school. As there was no penicillin to prevent infection, his leg developed gangrene and had to be amputated. He became a bookbinder because his parents considered him an invalid, incapable of physically demanding work. Offered a choice of tailoring or bookbinding, he chose the latter. He started working as a bookbinder from the age of 13 and opened this shop in 1950. He had several Arab assistants; the longest serving was Faraj Nasrallah.
His professional work was thus dedicated to the act of binding, but he also spent a lifetime trying to bind his ideals, traditions, friends and family. Given the slippery geography on which he was living, this task – binding a life together – was not an easy one.
Ibraaz: Please could you tell us about your work at The Jerusalem Show VII?
GK: When I was first introduced to my space, The Anadiel Gallery, I found out that it belonged to a bookbinder, who had lived and made his whole life through book binding in that specific space. This gave me the inspiration for my project. I think that it is an homage to a very dignified life of a man who has lived in this slippery ground for all his life, but never lost his dignity. It was like going into this shop, finding out about his property and displaying this in the way I like, all the while combining that with his life story.
Ibraaz: Obviously the work is site specific and speaks to the context that you were give, but an artist with a long trajectory of work, what is the significance of being here in Jeruslam?
GK: Being here really gave me a lot of inspiration. What I like about this city, is the mixture of cultures, the mixture of all three heavenly religions each making a ground for themselves. This is a mystic ground for me, which really inspires so many things and I am excited to be here.
The Recovery of an Early Water
Site-specific installation
2014
Patriarch's Pool and Nicola Zaphiriades' Shop
The Recovery of an Early Water is a site-specific project that focuses on one of Jerusalem's lost water supplies called the Patriarch's Pool.
According to the story, it was a King who built the pool, after he order that the direction of the Gihon Spring be changed by building an underground tunnel. This was during the war with the Assyrians, and he ordered this to happen so that his enemies did not have any water above ground. With this act of hiding, a lively element became invisible with the passage of time. By reviving the memory of the water with an architectural intervention, The Recovery of an Early Water might therefore be understood as a way of commemorating the social, political and historical memory of the city. The invisible aspect of water is turned into a virtual reality by allowing it to flow from the windows as if history were flowing out from the place it had been hidden.
Ibraaz: Please could you tell us about your work showing at The Jerusalem Show.
HB: The piece that I am showing here is called The Recovery of An Early Water and can be found at one of the oldest pools in Jerusalem, The Patriarch's Pool. It has many other names, but it is certainly of the oldest water storage facilities here, and was built by King Hezekiah in 8th Century BC. But due to the politics of the time- war with the Assyrians- in order to defeat his enemies Hezekiah changed the direction of the water flow by building an alternative tunnel system, which took the water underground. This was interesting to me because it is so related to our current time and what is happening. This thing about hiding something which is essential to life and shared by all human even in our bodies we have 90% water – so there was the urge to make that hidden thing visible.
Ibraaz: Was this something that you had thought about or worked on previous to coming here, or was it defined by your interaction with the city?
HB: When I first came to Jerusalem a couple of months ago, I was standing on the roof of the Swedish Institute and I saw this empty space. I asked about it and was told that it was the Patriarch's Pool. In the same institute, I found an image of the same place filled with water, as it would have been centuries ago. I was so interested by the space because of how it related to my other work- I am often concerned with water and how it relates to memory, especially underground water supplies, which are under our feet and yet we don't realise their significance. So I then began to do my research around the space.
Ibraaz: Is it a project that will extend beyond this particular iteration, as exhibited here?
HB: For this iteration in Jerusalem, I do feel it ends here, but it will continue in a different sense. This project has allowed the Patriarch's Pool to be open to the public for the first time and so will allow those living in close proximity the rare chance to visit the pool. Once again, the concept of making the invisible visible, could go beyond this show and into the virtual space. I have seen seeing all of these tents that are around the Old City of Jerusalem in blue and green and I have likened those to a virtual water path which people can engage with and walk under every day.
Intercourses
Video Installation
2013
Hammam Sitna Mariam
Intercourses examines themes of architectural pastiche and cultural dislocation by creating an immersive, multifaceted environment. My treatment of the location challenges the viewer's preconceived notions of space and time, rendering obsolete the distinction between real or imagined memories, between factual or fictional connections to a place.
The film follows three men, interwoven within the scenes, but it is the city that is the main character. I've worked in the past with this idea of architecture performing, using a building or structure as a main performer, a main protagonist. And here there was the possibility of working with a whole city. I was thinking about ways to make the city the protagonist or mediator between these characters, making them connect via the architecture. I wanted to explore how you could take something as superficial as this architecture and then turn it into something that could connect humans.
The project is located in Hammam Sitna Mariam in the old city of Jerusalem.
Blocus
Site-Specific Installation
2014
Swedish Christian Study Centre
Blocus is both an art installation, and a process:
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one that started with collecting 50 objects, listed in 2010 by Gisha, an Israeli human rights association, because they were prohibited from entering the Gaza Strip by Israeli authorities;
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then, in presenting them in Rouen, in September 2013 - the place was designed as a corner shop ; the objects were on sale at cost price;
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then, in sending them in a custom-made case to Gaza, using ordinary air-freight services - with 5 stops in 5 locations of Palestine;
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then, un-packing them from the case that brought them over and presenting them to the public, on 5 occasions, as if a stall on a flee-market or an customs examination table.
- In Blocus, the status of objects keeps switching from elements of an art-piece to ordinary items, thus pushing further the notion of ready-made, developed by Marcel Duchamp.
How to present Blocus
The idea for presenting Blocus is simple, yet challenging.
1. Present the objects along with a performance by Jonathan Loppin at the Swedish Cultural Centre during the opening tour of the Jerusalem Show on 24th of October 2014.
2. Record the performance.
3. Install the video at the Swedish Cultural Centre.
4. Repeat the same act in five different cities of Palestine: Hebron Gaza, Nablus, Betlehem, and Ramallah.
5. Add another video installation to the Swedish Cultural Centre after each performance.
The Swedish Cultural Centre will be the hub of the entire project during The Jerusalem Show.
On Blocus
Julie Faitot, September 2014
In September 2013, with Blocus ('blockade' in English) Jonathan Loppin transformed the 180 Rouen contemporary art centre into a small corner shop. On 50 metal shelves, lining the walls of the gallery and running in its centre, 50 items were exhibited: four samples of each lay separately on each shelf. The alphabetical order they were set in brought together unrelated objects: a 25-kilogram tar pot, next to a piece of timber, next to a pack of candy, next to buoys, and so on.
The artist collected the items according to a list that was set in 2010 by Gisha, an Israeli human rights association. With the help of several Gaza shopkeepers, Gisha identified items that were prohibited from importation in the Gaza strip, by the Israeli authorities.
In the 180, those objects were on sale at cost price: as people bought crisps or sweets, pens or toys, more and more shelves stood empty. The money thus collected was used to fabricate a box, designed to send back one of each item to Gaza and to present them to the public.
Jonathan Loppin has been invited by the French Institute of Gaza and the Jerusalem Show VII in the framework of Qalandiya International to perform, in five locations, the unpacking of the box: he will open it, unfold it to use it as a board and trestles, then set on it all the objects contained in the case, one after the other. In a different context, the art piece and the elements it is made of could have been a customs examination table or a stall in a flea market.
Jonathan Loppin's installation in Rouen dealt with the notion of the readymade: the status of the items presented in Blocus switched from ordinary articles, collected by the artist in shops, to elements of an art work as they were displayed in an art gallery, back to objects, once they were bought and used by their purchasers. It also questioned the way sculptures are traditionally shown in art exhibitions: 50 unremarkable shelves were used as plinths for objects presented like sculptures.
The new shape given to Blocus for its presentation in Palestine and the whole process it implies, emphasize both issues: a simple plywood sheet on common trestles will be used both as shipment case and plinth. More remarkably, elements that have been prohibited from entering the Gaza strip as ordinary objects will (hopefully) cross the border as an undividable set of items constituting an art installation.
Blocus thus upsets our views on what is art, what is a sculpture and how it should or could be presented in an exhibition. As a process, it fuels a long debate that started in 1926, with the judicial controversy over Bird in Space. This sculpture by Constantin Brancusi was shipped from France to the United States for an exhibition in a New York gallery: the American customs first refused to consider the sculpture as an art work, imposing the tariff for manufactured metal objects; then, after the press and several artists protested - among others, Marcel Duchamp and the American photographer Edward Steichen - they released the sculpture on bond (under 'kitchen utensils and hospital supplies') until a decision was made.
The lawsuit that followed ended in November 1928, with the following conclusion: 'The object now under consideration (…) is beautiful and symmetrical in outline, and while some difficulty might be encountered in associating it with a bird, it is nevertheless pleasing to look at and highly ornamental, and as we hold under the evidence that it is the original production of a professional sculptor and is in fact a piece of sculpture and a work of art according to the authorities above referred to, we sustain the protest and find that it is entitled to free entry.'
Migration
2003
Arab Catholic Scouts
My work is primarily in video and animation, with a particularly sculptural approach to working with the moving image. Building up moving images into a film is akin to fashioning a physical object.
My work explores the very fragile experience we have of reality – so far and so close, ever-changing, intangible, not easily outlined or defined. I seek to capture the sense of being nowhere, a continued displacement, migration, a relentless and transient home-making, the notion that home is right here by my side, never to be rooted in any particular place.
I investigate the different meanings of moving, travelling and changing places: of going beyond the border, or the gaps between things. I see fantasy as only existing along with reality and my work as being in the space between reality and unreality – the space where imaginary travel and movement is possible.
Hourglass #1
Installation
2014
Saint Francis Store
Recognition of the hourglass as a symbol of time has survived its obsolescence as a timekeeper. Unlike most other methods of measuring time, the hourglass concretely represents the present as being between the past and the future, and this has made it an enduring symbol of time itself.
The powder in this hourglass consists of crushed cement chipped from the Wall in the West Bank mixed with sand grain.
Hourglass #1 is handmade and produced in collaboration with a glass factory in Hizma. Hizma is a Palestinian town in the Jerusalem Governorate, located half a kilometre north-east of Jerusalem city.
Stenographer
Prints
2013
Austrian Hospice of the Holy Family
It is said that nostalgia burdens black and white photographs, particularly when the photos come from a family archive which contains locations, people and times, and – most importantly – the moment captured. They dwell in our memory.
Different elements may stand out forcefully to some more than others, often a matter of age, when the viewer perceives that the people in the picture are no longer among us.
These photographs are part of the family archive that my grandfather took a long time ago in several places in Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt, where he worked as a taxi driver.
The work is an attempt to create an alternative archiving by dismantling its components and re-archiving them, as well as outsourcing them to the general collective space.
This new archiving is a way to propose a single reading for these photographs while avoiding the nostalgia that exists in most black and white photographs, especially in a place like Palestine.
In this work, I examine the borders between personal and general, public and private, the collective and the individual.
Drop
Site-specific, sound-based installation
2014
Center for Jerusalem Studies- Al Quds Courtyard
Al-Ma'mal (The Tile Factory)
Sounds go up and down, move away from you and come towards you, almost describing the axis of another space within the given space of the courtyard. Specific field recordings are being lifted out of their original spot and moment, and are implemented in a new one: the habitat of the installation. Listening becomes specific, directive and perhaps political next to its everyday manifestations we are accustomed to.
As the practice of Paul Devens is based upon the changed, re-installed, altered, shifted, manipulated and otherwise re-interpreted and represented contexts, the work at the Jerusalem Show will put the audience through a sonic experience in a different space, both architectural and associative.
Confused Memories
Photography series
2014
Hammam Virgin Mary
In 2013 I visited the north of Palestine with my family for the first time since high school. We went to Ras al Naqura next to the Lebanese border, which was one of my favourite places in Palestine as a child. I stood on top of the hill looking down on the Mediterranean Sea and was shocked at how different it was. I could not find my memories of this place. Childhood scenes of the pure sand merging with a sea that seemed to hug the blue skies were not there anymore. The landscape of Palestine that I grew up with is gone.
In this project I am curating images that symbolize the distorted scene of the traditional landscape of Palestine; I intend to go back to the places I loved during my childhood and photograph what they look like now.
Red Clouds
Site-Specific Installation
2014
Arab Catholic Scouts – Jerusalem
This work investigates the links between cities and personal memories as a way of reading history. Red Clouds is based on the idea of attempting to collect untainted memories and to overlap them with the untold stories of the old city of Jerusalem. Accordingly,the artist started her work by collecting stories from her memory before asking two people who speak Arabic and English to retell her stories as their own. In this way, Şonya blends her stories with the fictive narrations of two strangers and processes these stories through semi-transparent red clouds. The stories reflect on bizarre situations as the traces of diverse memories, and show the immanent interplay between memory construction and the act of writing fiction. At the same time, the presence of 'light' in the work underlines a metaphysical approach by indicating the notion of hope and the act of healing through narrative and recollection.
Artist biographies
Gülsün Karamustafa
(1946, Ankara)
Gülsün Karamustafa graduated from the Istanbul State Fine Arts Academy.
She has participated in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th International Istanbul Biennials, the 3rd Gwangju Biennale, 8th Havana Biennial, 3rd Cetinje Biennial, 1st International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Seville, 11th International Cairo Biennale, 3rd Singapore Biennale, 1st Kiev Biennale, 4th Thessaloniki Biennale, 10th Gwangju Biennale and the 31st Sao Paulo Biennale. She has had solo exhibitions in Paris, Geneva, Montréal, Munich, Helsingborg, Milan, Torino, Rotterdam and Kassel, Bonn, Salzburg, Vienna, and Stuttgart, amongst others. She has taken part in exhibitions across Germany in Berlin, Bonn, Wiesbaden, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Köln, Hanover and Munich, and cities across the world, including Copenhagen, Eindhoven, Amiens, Graz, Geneva, Genoa, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Zurich, Vienna, New York, Minneapolis and Taipei.
Her works are included in the collections of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (MUMOK), Austria; Tate Modern, UK; Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, Austria; Proje 4L/Elgiz Modern Art Museum, Turkey; İstanbul Modern, Turkey; Van Abbemuseum, the Netherlands, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
Karamustafa lives and works in Istanbul.
Hera Büyüktaşçıyan
(1984, Istanbul)
Büyüktaşçıyan graduated from the Marmara University Faculty of Fine Arts painting department in 2006. She lives and works in Istanbul.
Büyüktaşçıyan uses the notion of the 'other' and combines it with the concepts of absence and invisibility in order to compose an imaginary connection between identity, memory, space and time. She uses metaphors from local myths, historic and iconographic elements to open up new narrative scopes around the notion of otherness.
Recent works enquire into the meaning of 'absence' within collective memory, with a focus on urban transformation which causes disappearance, invisibility, isolation and otherness within the framework of communities, time-space and memory.
Büyüktaşçıyan has participated in the following residency programmes: ACSL (Yerevan, 2011); PiST/// Interdisciplinary Project Space (Istanbul, 2012); AIR-Drop (Stockholm, 2012); Villa Waldberta (Munich, 2012-13); Delfina Foundation (London, 2014). Selected group exhibitions include: Worthy Hearts (Yerevan, 2011); The Afternoon Odyssey (SALT, Istanbul, 2012); Looking for Somewhere to Land (Stockholm, 2012); Reflecting on Reflection (Galeri Mana, Istanbul, 2012); Blur (Weltraum, Munich, 2012); Envy, Enmity, Embarrassment (ARTER, Istanbul, 2013); In Situ (PiST///, Istanbul, 2013); The Land Across the Blind (2014, Galeri Mana, Istanbul).
She lives and works in Istanbul.
Jesper Just
(1974, Copenhagen)
Jesper Just is a graduate from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.
An essential commonality throughout his work is the question of representation, understood as the manner in which we create images - and how those images, in turn, conjure ideas, expectations and conventions. One could say that, to Just, the interesting thing about representation is that it never merely represents. Rather, it actively performs. Music often plays a key role in his work, adding an element of oddness and absurdity by creating an apparent contradiction between the narrative and the soundscape. The materials, surfaces, and spatial materiality of the works are also meticulously designed, resulting in a heightened sense of physicality.
Just has work in the collections of major institutions, such as Guggenheim Museum, New
York; MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Carnegie Museum, Pittsburg; and KIASMA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki. He has exhibited his work in numerous venues, including De Moines Art Center; MMCA, The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; ARoS, Aarhus Kunstmuseum; the Danish Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale; HEART, Herning Museum of Contemporary Art; UMMA, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; MAC/VAL, Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val De Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine; John Curtin Gallery, Perth; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle upon Tyne; MAP, Mobile Art Production, Stockholm; Tampa Museum of Art; Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; Tromsø Centre Contemporary Art; Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Centre; Victoria Miro Gallery, London; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent; Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Miami Art Museum; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Cartagena International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Cartagena de Indias, Columbia, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, HPB14 Helsinki Photography Biennial, Helsinki, Finland.
Just is represented by the James Cohan Gallery in New York, the Galerie Perrotin in Paris, and the Galleri Nicolai Wallner in Copenhagen.
He lives and works in New York.
Jonathan Loppin
(1977, France)
Jonathan Loppin graduated from Reims School of Art and Design in 1998, spent a year at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver (Canada) and received an MFA with honours from the Paris Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in 2003.
Loppin deals with political and contemporary history issues. He produces installations transforming the exhibition spaces into strange environments that unsettle the viewer's position.
Loppin's work was seen in solo shows in various art institutions, such as Blocus, Rouen (2013); Anthology, Reims (2010); Je vous déteste tous, in Lab-Labanque, Béthune (2008); Le Souffle, Paris (2006) , Proving Ground, Saarbrücken (2011). Loppin also participated in group exhibitions in Europe or public art festivals including Le musée éclaté, Caen (2013) ; Rouen Impressionnée, Rouen (2011); and Sentiers rouges, Luxemburg (2009).
Loppin lives and works in Paris and Rouen (France).
Majd Abdel Hamid (1988, Damascus)
Majd Abdel Hamid studied at the International Academy of Art Palestine from 2007-2009 and holds a bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from Malmo Art Academy, Sweden (2010).
Hamid's selected group exhibitions include: Errors Allowed, Mediterranea 16 young Artists Biennial, Ancona, Italy (2013); Shubbak: A Window on Contemporary Arab Culture, Mosaic Rooms (2013); Young Artist of the Year (YAYA) 2012, Qalandiya International, French Cultural Center, Ramallah, Palestine (2012); Here and Now, Laznia Center for Contemporary Art, Gdansk, Poland (2011); De Ramallah et Gaza, Beaux-Arts de Toulouse, France (2011); ESCAPE, Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden.
Hamid participated in the artists residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2009), and was also a finalist in the A.M. Qattan Foundation's Young Artist of the Year competition in 2008, 2010 and 2012.
Hamid lives and works in Ramallah.
Noor Abuarafeh
(1986, Jerusalem)
Abuarafeh got her BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and followed this with a one-year study program in Lebanon (Homeworks Space Program) at Ashkal Alwan.
Her recent works explore elements related to memory, history and identity using public and personal archives (oral stories, blogs, photographs, books). The artist examines these elements through a process of dissembling, using an allegorical language to reveal different readings related to the aforementioned elements (memory, history and identity). In the last two years she completed a residency in Paris, at the Cité International des Arts, and in Japan, at Tokyo Wonder Site.
Noor was a member of the Open Studio group that organized several exhibitions in Palestine followed by workshops, lectures and collective projects, including the Young Artist Award Exhibition in Ramallah, Identities in the World in Japan, A Fish, a Wish and an Untitled Event in Ramallah, and Eye on Palestine in Brussels.
Abuarafeh lives and works in Jerusalem.
Paul Devens
(1965, Maastricht)
Paul Devens studied at the ABK and the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht.
In his work, Devens manages various concepts of reality by adapting codes, formalities and identities and embedding these in different 're-invented' conditions. These adaptations often derive from aspects of an institutionalized society. This process of adapting and embedding is sublimated in different manifestations, such as time and space related installations and minimal acts, frequently with a performative quality. The output consists of installations, with sonic and architectural elements, electro-acoustic performances and video screenings.
Esthetical features often embody technological phenomena by sound processing through computers, modular and interactive software, and homemade and circuit bent instruments in combination with elaborated transformations of (sometimes existing) spaces. The installations often study the correlation between architecture and time-based media, such as sound and the way in which spatial and sonic qualities oscillate with cultural pre-constructed conceptions.
Deven's work has been installed, performed and screened at: Museum Z33, Hasselt (B), Marres, Maastricht; Ctrl_Alt_Del, Istanbul; OCA/ISP, Oslo; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Diapason Gallery, New York; Radio Art Festival, Tallinn, and D-0 ARK Biennial of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
He lives and works in Maastricht.
Rula Halawani
(1964, Jerusalem)
Rula Halawani earned her BA in Photography from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada before moving to London to complete her MA in Photographic Studies at the University of Westminster. Founder and Director of the Photographic Unit at Birzeit University in Ramallah, Halawani introduced the first academic training program of its kind in Palestine.
Growing up under the occupation in East Jerusalem and working as a photographer in an intensely political environment, Halawani's work demonstrates a strong relationship between art and politics. Her documentary photographs depict aspects of Palestinian life and have been widely exhibited in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the USA. Her work is included in museum collections such as the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the Khalid Shoman Foundation Darat Al Funun in Jordan. Halawani's art was included in the 2003 and 2005 Sharjah Biennials, the 2007 Thessaloniki Biennale, the 2011 Istanbul Biennial, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan (2012), the Boston Museum of Fine Art (2013), the Houston Fotofest (2014), and a solo show in London at the Selma Feriani Gallery (2013). Retrospectives of her work have been shown at the Le Botanique, Brussels (2008) and the Al Hoash Gallery, Jerusalem (2009). Halawani is represented by the Selma Feriani Gallery in London.
Halawani lives and works in Jerusalem.
Zehra Şonya
(Limassol, 1972)
Zehra Şonyagraduated from the Fine Arts Faculty of Hacettepe University with a first-class department and faculty ranking. She completed her master's degree as a research assistant and returned to Cyprus in 2001. She taught sculpture courses at the Art History and Archeology Department of Eastern Mediterranean University from 2001–2003.
Şonya is currently working on various projects dealing with visual art (archiving, cyber museum design, website design, organizing series of panels and talks, working on publications on visual arts) at EMU-Cyprus Research Centre. She is also President and Vice-President of the European-Mediterranean Art Association, a relatively new organization. At present, she is the Project Coordinator and Editor-in-Chief of the association's quarterly art journal. She received various awards at local and international exhibitions that she participated in in the past. Sonya writes frequently and has produced a number of essays on art.
Şonya lives and works in Nicosia.