Culturally speaking, I’m a Christian, so I guess I’ve always known about Bethlehem. As a teenager, I traveled to the Holy Land, mesmerized by the contemporary transformation of Biblical sites: the Garden of Gethsemane into a bleak bus station; Gaza, the city of veterans, was bombarded with rockets.
It was 1988 and First Palestinian Intifada The (rebellion) began in protest of the 20th anniversary of Naksa (Israel’s 1967 annexation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip). The demonstrations became street battles where children threw stones at panicked young soldiers, who returned fire – often with fatal results. Bethlehem is near the West Bank border, meaning it was the site of frequent skirmishes and was inaccessible to outsiders. I never reached there.
Because I did not meet the Bethlehem exhibition in 1988 South West Bank This year’s Venice Biennale was impressive. South West Bank presents works created by 20 artists who are permanently based in the area, or who participated in residency programs Dar JacirCultural organization founded by Bethlehem-born artist Emily Zakir.
It is one of 30 “collateral” programs at the 2024 Venice Biennale, directed by Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa with the title strangers everywhere (Foreigners everywhere).
Known by insiders as the “mother of all biennales”, the Venice Biennale (founded in 1895 and now celebrating its 60th edition) is a massive exhibition of contemporary visual arts that is curated by a different guest curator every other year. Is.
Its main sites are caves armory And this Garden, a garden where art is displayed in national pavilions whose spatial relationships reflect geopolitical history. Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany and the US occupy prominent positions, while Egypt, Greece and Poland are located on the perimeter of the garden, and countries claiming nationality (e.g. Catalonia and Taiwan) occupy spaces scattered throughout the city. We do. ,
This year, several national pavilions in the Giardini are presenting art addressing exile, diaspora, migration and colonial violence.
Officially Selected Artists of Israel, Ruth Pater announced Said on the opening day of the biennale that his show would remain closed “until an agreement is reached on a ceasefire and the release of hostages”.
The Israeli pavilion remains closed with the Italian army are deployed outside, Meanwhile, the international activist group Art Not Genocide Alliance (frame) Demonstrations were organized to exclude Israel from the biennale. Anga claims this is a “double standard” by comparing the Biennale’s silence on Gaza to its support for Ukraine.
South West Bank
This charged background exudes peace South West Bank, The show is staged in the Magazzino Gallery, an 18th-century warehouse away from the pageantry and bustle of the main exhibition. The unfinished brick walls and wooden floors provide an insulating container for works that emphasize the need for rootedness, collaboration, and listening.
The first work in the show is a video blog titled Ardawa (“land reform” in Arabic). This includes permaculture designers, activists and teachers Mohammad Saleh explains How the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) burned down an urban farm planted with neighborhood children in Bethlehem.
Saleh points to shell casings, fire marks and pollutants on the soil. He provides practical guidance for setting up permaculture using an irrigation system and a delicate border of mowed weeds in an enclosure, so that “no one steps on the sunflowers we planted”.
The meeting between La Pizzica and La Dubka (Meeting Between Pizzica and Dubka, 2019), a film by Zakir and Andrea De Sienna, documents a different therapeutic process. It features workshops with dancers and musicians from the southern West Bank and the south of Italy. They trace their shared Mediterranean heritage to agricultural music and dance traditions.
Italians learn FirePalestinian folk dance that has come symbol of resistance In Social Media Symbolism of the Current War. Dancers are shown creating a temporary Fire From the basic two steps, rhythmically marked by a drum and olive wood castanets.
Duncan Campbell and Samir Albarri’s film Nothing Is Impossible (2018) records the meticulous restoration of a damaged 1987 Peugeot 405 car. While watching the film, I briefly considered the possibility that I might have first encountered this vehicle when it was new and being driven around the West Bank during the first intifada.
Recent history is also indirectly referenced in Zakir’s film, Bethlehem Street Corner (1998), which is a recreation of a street vendor’s pile of keffiyehs (black-and-white headscarves that have become the ‘Keffiyeh’). pro-palestine symbol) and Kurt Cobain T-shirts. The dates of birth and death of the rock star correspond to the 1967 accords following the Oslo Peace Accords and the 1994 dissolution of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
These small-scale works include four life-size photographs of ancient olive trees. The oldest of them is 4,500 years old. an essential source of livelihood as well as a Symbol of Palestinian resistanceTrees have been regular targets of destruction and theft.
These photos are from a larger project – Anchors in the Landscape – by artist Adam Broomberg and activist Rafael Gonzalez to record and protect trees. In His book about this effortAlso featured in the South West Bank, Broomberg (who is a descendant of Holocaust survivors) points out that since 1967, “800,000 [olive trees] Has been destroyed by Israeli authorities and settlers”.
I reflected on how these beautiful trees represent the Palestinian people’s roots in the land. This led me to reevaluate Pedrosa’s theme – foreigners everywhere – and consider that our current geopolitical crisis is increasingly alienating people at home as well as abroad.
With these thoughts rolling through my mind, I overheard a conversation inspired by A Lion’s Watermelon adam ruhana (2024), a photograph of a Palestinian boy eating a juicy watermelon is prominently displayed. A young man was explaining to the gallery attendant that he was from the part of Ukraine which is currently occupied by Russia. “They grow the best watermelons there,” he said, pointing to the Palestinian child in the photo. “I was just like him.”
Claire CarolineSenior Lecturer, Arts and Public Engagement, King’s College London
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