EMILY JACIR

Palestine/USA

Emily Jacir is an artist currently living and working between Brooklyn, New
York and Ramallah, Palestine. Her work focuses on issues of movement (both forced and voluntary), dislocation, radical displacement and resistance. It also addresses the unconscious markers of borders (both real and imagined) between territories, places, countries and states. She employs a variety of media in her practice including film, video, photography, performance, installation and sculpture.

Emily Jacir has shown extensively throughout the world. The most recent solo exhibitions include: Kunstmuseum, St.Gallen, Switzerland and Villa Merkel, Esslingen, Germany 2007/08; Alberto Peola Arte Contemporanea, Torino, Italy, 2007; Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London, UK 2005. Selected Group exhibitions include: 52nd Venice Biennale, Padiglione Italia, 2007; System Error, Palazzo delle Papesse, Centro Arte Contemporanea, Sienna, Italy, 2007; Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, 2007; Altered, Stiched, and Gathered, P.S.1 MOMA, NY, 2006; 15th Biennale of Sydney, Australia, 2006; Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking, Museum of Modern Art, NY, 2006; Darat aL Funun in Amman, Jordan, 2006; 51st Venice Biennale, Always a little further, Arsenale, Italy, 2005; Belonging, Sharjah Biennial 7, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates 2005.

Jacir also conceived of and co-curated the first Palestine International Video Festival in 2002.



EMILY JACIR
Entry Denied (a concert in Jerusalem)
, Installation, 2003
Documentation of a concert which never happened
Beta-cam 105 min video

Courtesy of the artist


Austrian nationals Marwan Abado, Peter Rosmanith, and Franz Hautzinger were invited to perform on July 25, 2003 in Jerusalem and July 26th in Bethlehem as part of the 12th Jerusalem Festival Songs of Freedom concert series organised by Yabous Productions.

Abado, who is of Palestinian origin, was officially invited by the Austrian Embassy in Tel Aviv as well as the United Nations Development Program. He obtained a visa through the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Vienna prior to his arrival.

On July 20th, 2002 Marwan Abado arrived at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport and was immediately detained by the Israeli authorities. After being held for 24 hours in the airport prison, (a representative from the Austrian Embassy who had come to welcome him remained with him during this time), Israeli Security cancelled his visa and he was put on the next plane back to Vienna.

He was denied entry into Israel for ‘security reasons’. No further explanation was given. A few days later, the same thing happened to musicians Black Umfolosi from Zimbabwe.

In an empty theater in Vienna, I asked Marwan and his band to perform the concert exactly as it was to have taken place in Jerusalem.