Emily Jacir

"WHERE WE COME FROM"

"emily-jasir exhibits review"

"One of the most moving gallery exhibitions I've encountered this season." -- Holland Cotter, Emily Jacir, New York Times

"Jacir puts herself admirably on the line to blur the distinction between art and life." -- Eugenie Tsai, Emily Jacir, Time Out NY

"Her efforts reverberate with the complexities of fear, longing, and travel restrictions [...] Read every affecting word." -- Kim Levin, Emily Jacir, Village Voice

"Enormous complexity, of course, underpins the project, but its simplicity could make you weep." -- Emily Jacir, The New Yorker.
 

In the project Where We Come From, the Palestinian artist Emily Jacir asked other Palestinians from around the world, "If I could do something for you, anywhere in Palestine, what would it be?" The artist used her American passport and its accompanying "freedom of movement" status in an attempt to realize desires of people who have limited or no access to their own nation. The exhibition documents in text, photography and video the artist's fulfillment of these requests across artificial and dangerous borders. The presentation is simple and straightforward: photographs record a vista denied, a family separated, a bill paid, a historic district obliterated. A text in Arabic and English records each request and its outcome (some requests have been impossible to fulfill).

The requests made of the artist range from the seemingly everyday to the more obviously harrowing. Her charges vary from "play soccer with the first Palestinian child you meet in Haifa" to "go to my mother's grave in Jerusalem on her birthday and put flowers and pray." This latter charge was impossible for him to do himself, as he is required to ask permission of the Israeli authorities when he wishes to enter Jerusalem. On the last anniversary of his mother's death, he was denied access to her grave. When Jacir went there in his stead, she was surprised to see tourists surrounding the neighboring grave of Oscar Schindler. This hero of resistance to the Nazis is buried next to a woman whose son lives a few kilometers away in Bethlehem and who is forbidden from paying his respects. The irony of the situation sheds light on the calculated division and dispersal of the people, history and culture of Palestine.

Edward Said Article on Exhibit

Edward Said Article on Exhibition

May2004