Artist Talk
Emily JacirAt Dar al Kalima College
April 16, 2019, 1 – 4 p.m.
As poetic as it is political and biographical, Emily Jacir’s work investigates histories of colonization, exchange, translation, transformation, resistance, and movement. Jacir has built a complex and compelling oeuvre through a diverse range of media and methodologies that include unearthing historical material, performative gestures, and in-depth research. Her works have been widely exhibited, and she has been honored for her achievements with awards including a Golden Lion at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007) for her work “Material for a film”; a Prince Claus Award from the Prince Claus Fund in The Hague (2007); the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum (2008); the Alpert Award (2011) from the Herb Alpert Foundation; and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome (2015).
Emily Jacir has had recent solo exhibitions at Alexander and Bonin, New York (2018); IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Dublin (2016–17); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015); Darat al Funun, Amman (2014–15); Beirut Art Center (2010); and the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2009). Her work has appeared in major international group exhibitions, including at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; dOCUMENTA (13) (2012); five consecutive Venice Biennales; Sharjah Biennial 10 (2011); 29th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2010); 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006); Sharjah Biennial 7 (2005); Whitney Biennial (2004); and 8th Istanbul Biennial (2003).
In 2003, OK Books published belongings, a monograph on a selection of Jacir’s work covering the period from 1998 through 2003, with original essays by Edward Said, Stella Rollig, Christian Kravagna, and John Menick. In conjunction with her exhibition at the Kunstmuseum in St. Gallen, Verlag für moderne Kunst (Nurnberg) published Emily Jacir (2008), a second monograph on her work featuring original texts by Murtaza Vali and Roland Wäspe. Buchhandlung Walther König, in Köln, published Jacir’s book ex libris in 2012 in conjunction with dOCUMENTA (13). In 2015, The Khalid Shoman Foundation in Amman, Jordan, published A star is as far as the eye can see and as near as my eye is to me (Idea Books, Amsterdam), the most extensive monograph to date on Jacir’s work in English and Arabic with essays by Yazid Anani, Ahmad Zatari, and Adila Laïdi-Hanieh. In 2015, Whitechapel and IMMA co-published with Prestel the fully illustrated catalogue Europa, including original essays on Jacir’s work by Jean Fisher, Lorenzo Fusi, Omar Kholeif, Graziella Parati, and Nikos Papastergiadis, as well as an excerpt from Franco Cassanno’s “Southern Thought” chosen by Jacir. Europa features almost two decades of sculpture, film, drawings, large-scale installations, and photography with a focus on Jacir’s work in Europe, in particular Italy and the Mediterranean. NERO in Rome, Italy, published Jacir’s most recent book, TRANSLATIO, about her permanent installation Via Crucis at the Chiesa di San Raffaele in Milano, which was unveiled in 2016.
Supported by Dar al Kalima.
ENTRY DENIED (a concert in Jerusalem), 2003, Still from single-channel film: 105 min. Photo by Joerg Lohse. Courtesy the artist.