Emily Jacir, Co-founder and Founding Director of Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research
Emily is an artist whose work—which spans a range of strategies including film, photography, sculpture, interventions, archiving, performance, video, writing, and sound—investigates histories of colonization, exchange, questions of translation, transformation, resistance, and movement.
She is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including a Golden Lion at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007); 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).
Her recent solo exhibitions include 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 been regularly featured 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).
Emily has been actively involved in education in Palestine since 2000 and is deeply invested in creating alternative spaces of knowledge production. She recently served as curator of the Young Artist of the Year Award 2018 at the A. M. Qattan Foundation in Ramallah which she entitled “We Shall be Monsters”. She is one of the founders of the International Academy of Art Palestine in Ramallah and was a full-time professor there from 2007 to 2017 and served on its academic board from 2006 to 2012. Jacir led the inaugural year (2011–12) of the Ashkal Alwan Home Workspace Program in Beirut and created the curriculum and programming; she also served on its curricular committee from 2010 to 2011. Between 1999 and 2002, she curated several Arab and Palestinian film programs in New York City with Alwan for the Arts while also teaching several workshops at Birzeit University. She conceived of and co-curated the first Palestine International Video Festival in Ramallah in 2002. In 2007, she curated a selection of shorts, “Palestinian Revolution Cinema (1968–1982),” which went on tour internationally.
Annemarie Jacir, Co-founder
Annemarie has written, directed and produced over sixteen films. Two of her films have premiered as Official Selections in Cannes, one in Berlin and in Venice, Locarno, and Telluride. All three of her feature films were Palestine's official Oscar entries.
With a commitment to teaching, training and hiring locally, Annemarie also curates and mentors, actively promoting independent cinema in the region. Founder of Philistine Films, she collaborates regularly with fellow filmmakers as an editor, screenwriter and producer.
In 2003, she co-founded the Dreams of a Nation project and organized the largest traveling film festival in Palestine, which included the screening of archival Palestinian revolutionary films screening for the first time on Palestinian soil. She has taught at Columbia, Bethlehem, Birzeit University and in refugee camps in Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. In 2011, Chinese director Zhang Yimou selected her to be his first protégée as part of the Rolex Arts Initiative. In 2018, she was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and also served on the jury of the Cannes Film Festival.
Yusuf Nasri Jacir, Co-founder
Yusuf was born in Bethlehem and grew up in Dar Jacir . He attended primary school at the Freres School in Bethlehem, graduated from Terra Sancta Secondary High School and studied for one year at Bir Zeit College. He taught English to primary school students at the Freres College in Bethlehem for two years.
He then worked in Hebron from 1962 until 1969 for UNRWA as the Area Welfare Officer for the Hebron and Bethlehem districts. In this position, he was in charge of social and welfare activities including supervision of case work; handicapped programs; distribution of food and medical supplies; directing and supervising boys’ youth activities centers and sewing centers for girls as well as after school activities at all those centers: Arroub, Fawwar, Deheisheh, Aida, and Azzeh camps. In this position he supervised case workers, youth leaders, sewing centers instructors and community workers.
The Area Welfare Officer job gave Yusuf the opportunity to travel to the USA for the first time in 1966 as a representative of Jordan to the Chicago International Program for Youth Leaders and Social Workers. After the 1967 Naksa, he worked in Chicago for two years as a social worker and youth advisor for minority children at a community house on Chicago’ s west side and for six years in finance at the Quaker Oats Company. While working full time he put himself through College at the age of 33.
He obtained a BA degree with Honors from Roosevelt University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Yusuf then worked internationally as a financial controller in Saudi Arabia for multiple companies owned by the Mawarid Group among many others. He is currently a consultant and financial advisor in Riyadh and is serving as Treasurer and Board Member of the Advanced Learning School in Riyadh. He was a member of the American Business Group Board in Riyadh from 1990 to 1998.
Aline Khoury, Managing Director
Aline Khoury is a cultural manager, producer and researcher living and working in Palestine. Aline has worked with several arts and cultural organizations across Palestine; managing spaces, organizing exhibitions and public programs, as well developing institutional partnerships and strategies. She was involved in several local networks, including Qalandiya International and Shafaq- Jerusalem Arts Network, and is currently a regional facilitator in Arts Collaboratory, a translocal ecosystem of twenty-five socially engaged arts organizations. The former experience has guided Aline to explore new ways of working and collaborating together for a more sustainable future. She studied History of Art and Social-Anthropology (B.A.) in Jerusalem, and Aural & Visual Cultures (M.A.) in Goldsmiths University, London.
Nicolás Jaar, Sound Residency Program
Nicolás Jaar is a Chilean sound maker born in 1990. He is known in the club world for the various dance 12″ EPs and remixes released between 2008 and 2011. Since his first full length (space is only noise, 2011), he has embarked in multiple divergent paths. For the last 7 years, he has released a large volume of recordings through his label Other People (including music by Lydia Lunch, William Basinski, Patrick Higgins, Dj Slugo, Lucretia Dalt, Pierre Bastien & Tomaga, Vtgnike and others). In 2015, Nicolás scored Dheepan by director Jacques Audiard (winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2015). In 2016, Jaar launched THE NETWORK, a web of 111 fictional radio stations done in collaboration with artists Jena Myung and Maziyar Pahlevan. A batch of these mixes was aired on NTS radio and is archived here: (https://bit.ly/35PwrHu). In 2017, The Network became a book, published by Printed Matter in NY. In the spring of 2019, Jaar was commissioned for a nine hour improvisation in the oude kerk church in Amsterdam which he performed alongside two organists and a dozen surround speakers. In the fall of 2019, he presented Incomprehensible Sun, a sound and light installation in a 200-meter-long ex-military shooting range in Het Hem (Zaandam) and the debut of Retaining the Energy but Losing the Image alongside Vincent de Belleval which consisted of 10 large rotating parabolic reflectors that capture and emit hyper-focalized surround sound. For the first sharjah architecture triennale (curated by Adrian Lahoud in 2019) Nicolás performed a piece for 16 buried speakers in the desert near the Mleiha Archaeological Centre. Nicolás has collaborated with Lydia Ourahmane (Music for two seas), Fka Twigs (Magdalene), and Patrick Higgins under the name AEAEA. He is also a current member of improvisational ensemble ¡miércoles! alongside dancer and choreographer Stéphanie Janaina, founding member of multidisciplinary research collective Shock Forest Group, and half of the band Darkside.
Walid Al Wawi, Website
Walid Al Wawi is a Jordanian Palestinian-native, working in painting, performance, video and installation. He received critical acclaim for his academic and purest approach to objects and physical documentation that dialogue with the political and cultural identity of the Palestinian body in diaspora, it’s implication on the post colonialist dream of pan Arabism and vice versa.
In 2011 Al Wawi was awarded The Shiekha Manal Young Artist Award, followed by a scholarship from the Shiekh Salama Art Fellowship which earned him his masters degree in Fine Arts by Central Saint Martins, University of Arts London. Through out his practice Walid has had solo exhibitions at Art16 London, DUCTAC, and JamJar in Dubai; group shows at Jameel Art Center UAE, Darat Al Funun Jordan, Qattan Art Foundation Palestine, MMCA Seoul, XX Bienal Santa Cruz, FIAC France, Incubarte Spain, Abudhabi Art and Art Dubai UAE; and was a resident with The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in South Korea.
Walid is the founder of “Samt for Art and Research” a virtual foundation that manifests primarily in a digital format through Samt.co. Its strict online presence is set to further its goal of democratising art accessibility and pushing the boundaries of the physically confined white space to a more contemporary and digital approach; opening the receptivity of art and discourse from Southwestern Asia and North Africa to an international audience from all regions with no geo-political restrictions on humans or art.
Since it’s establishment through Samt, Walid mentored and curated the works of numerous aspiring artists from the MENA and collaborated with the Tate Exchange, Darat AlFunun and many other renowned galleries and foundations around the globe.
Qais Assali, Volunteer
Qais Assali (b. 1987 Nablus) is an artist, designer and educator. His works with photography, video, installation, lecture performance, graphic design, and in the archives seek to engage and subvert national geopolitical power dynamics. His interdisciplinary work stages questions between site and the body in relation to his own identity and locale in order to debunk metaphoric surrounding contested geographies.
His work has been exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center; Rashid Diab Arts Centre, Khartoum; SculptureCenter, New York; Darat al Funun’s Lab, Amman; Jeune création, Paris; Festival Artes Vertentes de Tiradentes, Brazil; Temporary Art Centre, Eindhoven; 6018North, Chicago, solo exhibitions at Akademirommet, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; Khan Al Wakala, Nablus; and Michigan State University Union Art Gallery.
Assali has been teaching at a number of academic institutions in Palestine, recently was a Visiting Assistant Professor for the Critical Race Studies Program at Michigan State University 2018-19, and currently a Core Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. After his graduation from the International Academy of Art Palestine, he pursued and holds an MFA in Studio Art from Bard College, New York and an MA in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Hamza Badran, Volunteer
Hamza Badran (b.1993)s a film maker and visual artist based in Basel, received a BA in contemporary visual art from the International Academy of Art-Palestine in 2018, and he is currently attending a master program in Fine Art at KunstInstitute HGK-FHNW in Basel
Advisory Council
Abdelfattah Abusrour, Adila Laïdi-Hanieh, Jorge Tacla, Sari Khoury, Hassan Muamar, George Al'ama, Diana Buttu, Zahi Khoury
The following individuals have contributed to the founding of Dar Jacir as an organization and while they have moved on to other things they have remained an integral part of our family:
Motasem Al-Ghnimat, Project Coordinator, 2018 – 2019
Samer Al-Barbari, Custodian/Groundskeeper/Chef, 2018 – 2019
Hassan Muamer, Site Engineer, 2018 - 2019
Susanna Gonzo, Intern, Spring 2019
Abeer Saadeh , Admin and Finance Officer 2018
Ibrahim Burnat, Coordinator, 2018
Khaled Hourani Advisory Council 2017 - 2019
Dyala Husseini Advisory Council 2017 - 2019