Artist Profile: Emily Jacir By Doris Bittar for Canvas Magazine, Dubai, UAE Crossing Boundaries

With a broad smile, nascent dimples and a shock of wavy black hair tenuously tied back, Emily Jacir graciously accepted the Golden Lion Award, given to an artist under forty, at the 2007 Venice Biennale. More awards have followed, including the Prince Claus Award from The Hague and most recently the Hugo Boss Prize from the Guggenheim, which culminates in an exhibit at the museum this February. In the last few years Jacir has been wholeheartedly embraced by the art world, chosen by curators from the Taipei Biennial to the Museum of Modern Art and reviewed by top journals.

Armed with an American passport and courage, Jacir has crossed all manner of boundaries, given her particular identity. Jacir was born in Baghdad in 1970 to Palestinian parents from Bethlehem. She grew up in Saudi Arabia and Italy, was educated in the American heartland, and matured into her visual arts practice in New York City. Currently, Jacir divides her life and work between Ramallah, Palestine, New York and Rome. Jacir’s current recognition is based on a prolific decade of installations and art pieces that have given voice to the voiceless. Speaking about the Palestinian experience, Jacir said, “We are possibly the most discussed, yet most misrepresented people in the world. We are constantly dissected and examined by foreign 'experts' who ‘explain’ who we supposedly are. Additionally, an inordinate number of people have no problem claiming agency to speak on our behalf.” Jacir’s art work reaches from the elders of a Palestinian refugee camp and international activists to European bureaucracies and the high art world. Through art she urges her audiences to get out of ghettoized mindsets, to act and engage with the world. She has also served as an example for Arabs, particularly Arab-American artists and civil rights activists, who want to influence American foreign policies.

Jacir is a conceptual artist whose choice of medium changes with each piece. Like parched skin stuck to a skeleton, Jacir’s aesthetic presentations are spare and without intervention other than what is intended for structural support, such as a table, a wall, or a display case. Emily Jacir’s process sheds light on Western anxieties and fears. Her strategy of contrasts includes personal and historical narratives that transcend the limits of place and time. The captured narratives, exhibited as if in a public laboratory, are irrefutably stark. Within these experiments, her public is able to test the veracity and flexibility of large issues. Most of Jacir’s installations also blend a layer of private experiences into a conspicuously democratic format. SEXY SEMITE, a wild guerilla piece, was enacted each year from 2000 to 2002 before finally catching the attention of the press. Jacir and 60 Palestinians contributed ads to the Village Voice Personals Section seeking romantic liaisons with Jewish readers. They invited them to marry Palestinians, thereby enabling Palestinians to return to Palestine using the Israeli Law of Return.

Sexy Semite 2002

I wanted to pollute the space of the personal-ads section, so that one issue of The Village Voice personals section would be full of Palestinians looking for Jewish mates. The participants adhered to guidelines such as bringing up the Right of Return, highlighting the fact that Palestinians who are indigenous to that land do not have the right to return to their own country while any Jew on earth, from any country, of any race, has the right to “return.” …Another guideline was to use the word “Semite” to describe themselves. This addressed the fact that in the American context “Semite” only pertains to Jews, but we are Semites… During the infiltration of the February Valentines Day issue of the Village Voice the media took note. They had no idea what it was. They thought it was a terrorist threat, that Palestinians were going to kill Israelis. Stories about this so-called terrorist activity appeared in three publications that I know of: US News & World Report called it “Fear Factor: Palestinian Valentines or Ambush.” The New York Post’s headline read “West Banky Panky in Personal Ad Blitz.”

Another example, also employing a democratic process, is the haunting and incomplete piece, Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Which Were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948. Emily invited over 140 people to embroider the fabric of a UN-issued refugee tent with the names of the 418 towns and villages that were destroyed.

Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Which Were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948 Jacir explains, "Our narrative, our story is absent from history books. When I made 'Memorial…’ I chose English because the piece was made in NYC and I wanted the New York audience to be able to read the names, say them out loud and question why they had not heard them before and why that history is not in their books.” Jacir’s studio was open for people from activists and dentists to bankers and musicians to sew the names of destroyed villages. Jacir continues, “Many who came were Palestinians from the villages that were destroyed, and a few were Israelis who lived on the remains of the villages. The piece documents a 3-month community-based project. A daily log of the people who sewed with me is always exhibited with it.” Jacir’s piece that catapulted her to international recognition is Where We Come From. These photo essays squarely position Jacir into the role of a humble servant to disenfranchised Palestinians, particularly those within Israel’s occupied lands. Like a genie, Jacir carried out 30 wishes that came from individual Palestinians who could not fulfill their desires due to their disenfranchisement and travel restrictions imposed by Israel.

Jacir with Where We Come From 2003 These humble and poignant wishes ranged from playing soccer in a particular alley and visiting the grave of a family member to eating kinefih from a favorite bakery or visiting the ruined site of the family home. Jacir explains, “This piece comes out of my own personal experience of the constant back and forth between Palestine and whatever country I happen to be residing in at the moment.” She continues, “The question we are always asked at the borders: ‘Did someone give you something to carry?’ was also an inspiration for this piece.” Viewers of Where We Come From become engaged witnesses to the inner workings of the Israeli occupation, its illogic and inhumanity.

Today Jacir could not do this piece. She states, “I can no longer move freely through the borders with my American passport. I am no longer allowed to enter Gaza, and certain Palestinian towns in the West Bank. Israel is relentlessly moving forward in the construction of the Apartheid Wall, which began in the spring of 2002. Palestinians with foreign passports are increasingly being denied entry into the country at all border crossings and are being forced to immigrate. Israel has decided that ‘freedom of movement’ is no longer a right for American passport holders and has created measures to ensure this.” In Material for a Film, the awarded piece for the Venice Biennale, Jacir turns her attention to Wael Zuaiter. The yellowed mid-20th century Italian program notes are artifacts, part of the detritus that once surrounded the life of Palestinian poet and translator Wael Zuaiter. He was the first of many Palestinian artists and intellectuals to be assassinated by Israel during the 1970s and 1980s. A video showing a few seconds of Wael’s role in Peter Sellers’ The Pink Panther captures his short movements on the camera. Zuaiter’s minimal gestures are played on a short and repeating loop to indulge that human yearning for detail and repetition when loss is being expressed.

Material For a Film 2007 Material for a Film is arguably Jacir’s most personal piece. “Wael was one of the people to whom I felt close," she says. "He lived in Rome, I went to high school in Rome. He moved from the Gulf, I grew up in the Gulf. There's something about his

character. Wael didn't publish anything. He burnt everything, all of his works, before he died. This failed figure was somehow compelling." This artwork expresses palpable sorrow and is constructed as tenderly as a daughter might have assembled it. Material for a Film is a memorial in which recurring cadences outline the wounds of a poet and his nation. In another installation/performance of Material for a Film at the Sydney Biennial in 2006, Jacir committed a visceral act. She learned to fire a the same caliber pistol the Mossad used to kill Wael and shot 1000 blank white books. This installation was based on the one bullet, which had pierced Zuaiter’s copy of 1001 Nights the night he was killed. After her performance Jacir arranged the 1000 books from floor to ceiling like a mausoleum. Jacir reminds us, “Wael's dream was to translate A Thousand and One Nights directly from Arabic into Italian. He had been working on this project since his arrival in Italy. To this day a direct Italian translation from the Arabic does not exist. All the Italian translations are from other languages.” Among those watching Jacir closely are Arab Americans, who view Emily’s success as a blueprint for political strategies. Since September 11, 2001, Arab Americans, no longer content with how others categorize them, have begun reclaiming control of their image. The founding of the Arab American National Museum in 2005 helped to strengthen the voices of artists and writers and has unified the larger Arab American arts community. Emily Jacir's canny style, her ability to take the known and elevate it to transformative public awareness, has influenced many Arab American artists who want to affect policies toward Palestine and perceptions of Arab culture in general.

With one foot in the United States and Italy and another firmly planted in Palestine, Emily Jacir navigates differing but related spheres. Her life in the United States dovetails with her life in Ramallah. Both are examples of living in the bellies of beasts, but Ramallah is where her soul is nourished. Between these and other spheres, Jacir follows an infectious credo never to negotiate against herself. Most importantly, Jacir recognizes when an audience is on the verge of becoming transformed and has consistently offered to cross those boundaries with them, always with the anticipation of advancing to the next challenge. Doris Bittar December 31, 2008, San Diego, California