"[Chrisoula Lionis, curator of Beyond the Last Sky, an upcoming exhibition of Palestinian photography and video at the Australian Centre for Photography in Paddington, Sydney] was adamant that the exhibition was not anti-Israel." (Humour surfaces amid conflict, Andrew Taylor, The Sun-Herald, 26/8/12)
Heaven forbid! We wouldn't want to give the impression that Palestinians have an Israeli problem, now would we? Quite the contrary! In reality, it's the long-suffering, peace-seeking Israelis who have a Palestinian problem.
Would you believe these buggers have the gall to hang around on Israeli turf? And they just never seem to learn! Despite being whacked repeatedly over the years for walking on the grass, they're still doing it! To give you some idea of just how profoundly annoying they are, they were actually hanging around on it, turning it into a bloody desert of all things, before the Israelis even got there!
And perish the thought that Mr Hourani's difficulty in getting an Australian visa has something to do with Israel:
"One of the artists, Khaled Hourani, has been invited to speak at the University of NSW on September 8. But Ms Lionis said the artist's Palestinian passport had made it difficult for him to obtain a visa. 'The delay in his visa is a reflection of the trouble of travelling in and out of the territories,' she said." (ibid)
Hey, some places are just harder to get out of than others, OK?
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Have you seen Ruth Pollard's 27/8 report in The Age, MERC? Wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't - it seemed to appear with a splash in the early evening, and had disappeared from the front of the Age website by the next morning. "Israeli Soldiers Expose Plight of Palestinian Children"
I have, in the print edition of the SMH. Check out my upcoming post.
Why is it an issue that the exhibition isn't anti-Israeli in its focus? The comment isn't placatory, it's the truth. That part of the article was talking about the aims of the curator in putting together the show, not the artist's, curator's or anyone else's position on the conflict. While exploring Palestinian art and culture, and the way it has responded to the conflict, may be a political statement in itself, it seems the project is not a wholly political one that seeks to take a position on Palestine/Israel. It wasn't a disingenuous or misleading statement trying to soften something- the show is not about Israel. I'm interested as to why this seems to be taken as inappropriate?
Why is it a problem that the curator said the exhibition is not anti-Israeli? It wasn't a disingenuous or misleading comment that was meant to soften the blow of anything, nor was it supposed to be placatory in any sense. The show is not anti-Israeli- that is the truth of the matter. Nobody said it would be a problem if it was; it was perhaps emphasised because of the tendency to see explorations of Palestinian art and culture as being by default anti-Israeli, and I actually think it is a helpful thing to try to step away from default positions like that. Of course the work in the show responds to the conflict, of course Israel is not a non-presence in the room- but the show itself as a project had its own aims. The show was not supposed to be about Israel. It's about Palestine. I guess my question is whether or not you think that is okay or not, or if the main issue was that it seemed like something was being covered up by that comment in the article?
Israel is because Palestine isn't. I don't really know how anyone can talk about Palestine today without reference to Israeli occupation, colonization and apartheid, or about Israel without reference to same. I'm not suggesting that the curator's word were disingenuous or misleading, they simply struck me as unnecessarily defensive.
Ah sorry I had some technical issues over here, so I thought my first post failed- they are both from the same person! Yes I realise it is impossible to separate the two ideas, I just meant that the exhibition was making the effort to explore Palestinian art and culture in a way that reflects the same kind of interest we have in other cultural identities, and the sense of defensiveness is not unprompted given the way that such a project is met with the assumption that it is standing up for something it never said. I just wanted to say I think that recognising the need to explore the culture is a different route toward a different kind of recognition- one that is hard to forge and I guess I got a little defensive at the charge of 'overly defensive', if you know what I mean? Sorry for the accidental spam above too,
I take your point. All the best for the exhibition.
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