The Keeper

Creator: Shuruq Harb | 2012

“An artist book that tells the story of her encounter with Mustafa, a young street vender in downtown Ramallah, who sells images culled from the Internet to the public. Over the last decade, Mustafa downloaded and sold the most popular political and entertainment images that have been in high demand by the Palestinian public. Harb comes in contact with Mustafa while she is researching the different kinds of images that circulate in the public sphere in Ramallah city. Upon her encounter with him, she tries to salvage what is left over from his unsold collection. Flipping through the fragile low-resolution photographs, she is overwhelmed by the diversity of the collection. In an attempt to identify the sources and content of the images, she begins to refresh her memory by returning to the Internet.”

Found here

Ramallah in the Past

Creator: Vera Tamari | 2010

“An affliction or a blessing? To many of its original inhabitants, most of whom have in the course of the last hundred years immigrated to North America, seeing Ramallah now, is both an affliction and a blessing. Their individual and collective memory of the place - the “village” they had left behind, has become confused and somewhat marred by the dramatic change in recent decades. Ramallah now is a throbbing cosmopolitan city, a heterogeneous social structure, experiencing fast demographic and economic change and the emergence of the new middle class as observed in the change in peoples’ attire, in living styles, in behavior and in accent. There is as well as an unprecedented construction boom and transformation in the landscape. The ethnographic section in “Ramallah - the fairest of them all?” mirrors issues of roots and authenticity, touching on the meanings of belonging, ownership, loss and estrangement. It’s a tale of Ramallah as it was in the 40’s and 50’s of last century, a small town rooted in the history of its family clans and origins. Relived in this exhibition as if through the mirror of the past, Ramallah is remembered as a charming place, with personal stories of love, immigration, marriage, myths, heroes and anti-heroes. It’s a story that narrates life modes, ceremonies and rituals of private, sometimes mundane reality of everyday life. A cry of loss? Perhaps, yet this exhibition is an invitation for recovery and reflection not only on the Ramallah that was but what it ought to be.”

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Ramallah Now

Creator: Yazid Anani & Emily Jacir | 2010

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? The infamous assertion from the fairytale of Snow White by the wicked Queen shows explicitly the ‘mirror’ as a medium in which one is critical and aware of his own reflection, his being, his existence, and his form in a particular context. The queen kept asking the mirror about her contested ‘fairness’; unraveling threads of insecurities, the dark side, her reign, and her fight for the title as the fairest of them all? The ‘mirror’ exists in our homes, reflecting our deepest fears and secrets is thus a medium that enables one to reflect, change, explore, and reform in context and in being. ‘Art is the image of a human being’ as stated by Joseph Beuys. Art is a ‘mirror’ where one can see the reflection of his otherness. The mirror recreates the image of the context it inhabits and at the same time one can perceive the context and its character through it. Hence, art is not an alien to its spatial realm; it reflects all the processes, events, objects, and structures of that realm. When people are confronted with art, then they are in reality confronted with their own self; hence, they open their own eyes and reflect on their freedom, autonomy, and their role in society. Six artists, four interventions create a mirror through which Ramallah’s contemporary image is reconstructed. The city itself becomes an exhibition where people stare back in inquisition at the different art forms from billboards, and posters to vitrined trash, reflecting on local spatial issues of modernity, architecture, politics, society, identity and change.”

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Al Riyadh

Creator: Emily Jacir and Yazid Anani | 2010

“A series of public interventions which explore the rapid transformation of the urban fabric of Ramallah. Ramallah is becoming a city of grey concrete towers with skeletons of half-finished high-rises everywhere. It seems that there is a construction site on every corner with new high-rise buildings replacing old buildings and wiping out the city’s architectural heritage. With a neoliberal economy that is still in the process of spatial appropriation, urban spaces in Ramallah are on a trajectory of accommodating global processes despite the fact that they exist under Israeli occupation. The influx of new global telecommunication technology, transnational politics, and global economy has caused a turbulent shift; the landscape is being destroyed, there is a proliferation of gated communities, growing social segregation, continued destruction of the rural agro-economy, and an ever increasing obsession with consumerism. Much of the architecture of the gated communities is a reproduction of the colonial imagery. “Al Riyadh” the promise of a paradise is an attempt to create moments of criticality in the transition and collision between locality and neoliberalism. It questions the correlation of the decline of the Palestinian collective political project and its resistance to colonialism with the emergence of a city entrapped by neoliberal politics, neo-capitalist structures and a complete isolation from the Palestinian community”

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Ramallah Syndrome

Creator: Sandi Hillal & Alessandro Petti | 2010

“What’s wrong about having a normal life in Ramallah? Am I resisting by insisting to have a normal life in Ramallah? How to distinguish between having a normal life in Ramallah and normalizing with the occupation? Where are Ramallah’s borders? Do I need a permission to leave Ramallah? Where does Ramallah end? Am I living in a bubble called Ramallah? Is Ramallah liberal? Do you see your future in Ramallah? Do you consider your self from Ramallah? In which form do you resist the occupation in Ramallah? Is Ramallah the capital? Is Ramallah under occupation? Is there a life outside Ramallah? Is Ramallah New York? Is Ramallah Amman? Who owns Ramallah? What is Ramallah hiding? “Ramallah Syndrome” is a public intervention by Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti and Yazid Anani. Ramallah Syndrome is a collective that examines the side effect of the new spatial and social order that emerged after the collapse of the Oslo ‘peace process’ which was manifested in a urban psychology of ‘hallucination of normality’, the fantasy of a co-existence of occupation and liberty. The work of the collective inclines on questioning issues such as the illusions and realities of the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state; likewise, the consequence of the perpetual persistence of a colonial regime and its legacy on Palestinian national identity. Ramallah Syndrome is ultimately about the critique and potentiality associated with forms of resistance and subjugation in a colonial context. This edition of Ramallah Syndrome takes the dialogue and questions of the collective to the public spaces of Ramallah. Thirty questions printed on canvas were distributed by the artists to different coffee shops and restaurants all around the city.”

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In Ramallah, Running

Creator: Guy Mannes-Abbott | 2012

“In Ramallah, Running represents Guy Mannes-Abbott’s uniquely personal encounter with Palestine, interweaving short, poetic texts with exploratory essays. International artists and prominent writers have been invited to respond both directly and indirectly to the texts with newly commissioned works. The text consists of 14 parts, which alternate running within the limits of the city and walking out from it to, along, beyond and off limits, discovering how insidiously mobile those limits are under Occupation. With singular style and compelling force, Mannes-Abbott’s texts generate a very special intimacy with a rarely seen or experienced Palestine.”

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I Heart Hamas and Other Things I’m Afraid to Tell You

Creator: Jennifer Jajeh | 2012

“With the current ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, the threat of global terrorism, and the never-ending negotiations and hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by all of the bad international news. That’s exactly how Jennifer feels. And to make matters worse, Jennifer is Palestinian. Well, Palestinian American. Or more precisely: a single, Christian, first generation, Palestinian American woman who chooses to return to her parents’ hometown of Ramallah at the start of the Second Intifada. Join her on American and Palestinian soil on auditions, bad dates, and across military checkpoints as she navigates the thorny terrain around Palestinian identity. Weaving together humour, storytelling, multimedia, live theatre and pop culture references, Jajeh explores how she becomes Palestinian-ized, then politicized and eventually radicalized in this fresh, often funny, searingly honest solo show.”

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The Slaughterhouse

Creator: Yazan Khalili | Unkown

Working out of Ramallah, Syrian-born artist Yazan Khalili created this photo-narrative focused on the pervasive cultural metaphors of darkness and the sea. The car lot depicted is located near the border of Area A and Area C and symbolizes one of many barriers. The artist explains, “the guys there allowed us to take photos as long as they didn’t appear in them. Some of the cars are stolen, some are legally dumped. They said this makes it harder for the Israeli army to figure out which is which. We drove west that night, but we didn’t reach the sea… We stopped just after the car dump, we were not allowed to drive further west. I wanted to take a photo of the newly found sea… But, by mistake, the camera fell off the tripod. The sea at that point receded back endlessly, far away into the west.” 

Found here

Where We Come From

Creator: Emily Jacir | 2001-2003

“The limits of our individual perceptions and experiences are unfortunately founded in political and economic realities that are by and large inescapable. Jacir made it her purpose with this two-year project, begun in 2001, to begin an inquiry of stunning simplicity and sensitivity.  The question was posed to numerous individuals living around the world but mainly of Palestinian identification, “If I could do anything for you in Palestine, what would it be?”  The artist uses her personal freedoms (and this word is chosen with great hesitation, given that it has taken such an ugly tone in the past few years) as a U.S. passport-holding individual and resident of both New York and Ramallah to produce a series of documentations of herself living out the desires of others.”

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Twelve

Creator: Mohanad Yacouby | 2007

“Young Palestinian artist contributed a work-in-progress by presenting a trailer of a larger film he is working on titled Twelve which investigates life within the city of Ramallah after midnight. Referring to his work, Yacouby says, ‘The film is a panoramic portrait of the city in the night, through different lives working within”. The short video was presented at the Al-Ma’mal Foundation, New Gate, Old City, Jerusalem.’”

Found here