Emily Jacir is a Palestinian artist and filmaker. She was born in Bethelem in 1970, but she spent her childhood in Saudi Arabia.
She atended high school in Italy and she graduated with an art degree from the Memphis College of Art. She divides her time between Rome, Italy and Ramallah.
Jacir works in a variety of media including film, photography, installation, performance, video, writing and sound. She has exhibited extensively throughout the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East.
Since 1994, she started to hold solo exhibitions in different places: in the Beirut Art Center (2010), Guggenheim Museum, New York (2009), and the Kunstmuseum, St Gallen (2008). Jacir participated in the 51st (2005), 52nd (2007), and 53rd (2009) Venice Biennales, the 15th Sydney Biennial (2006), Sharjah Biennial 7 (2005) and the 8th Istanbul Biennial (2003). She received the Hugo Boss Prize (2008), the Prince Claus Award (2007) and a Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale (2007). She is Professor and member of the Academic Board at the International Academy of Art Palestine (2006-11), and Resident Professor at Home Workspace Program, Beirut (2011-12). Emily Jacir is represented by Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London, and Alexander and Bonin Gallery, New York.
She has also worked with various organizations including the Qattan Foundation, al-Ma’mal Foundation and the Sakakini Cultural Center. She has been involved in creating numerous projects and events such as Birzeit’s Virtual Art Gallery. She also founded and curated the first International Video Festival in Ramallah in 2002. She curated a selection of shorts; Palestinian Revolution Cinema (1968 – 1982) which went on tour in 2007.
Between 2000 / 2002 she curated several Arab Film programs in NYC with Alwan for the Arts including the first Palestinian Film Festival in 2002. She works a full-time professor at the vanguard International Academy of Art Palestine since it opened its doors in 2006 and she also served on its Academic Board from 2006 through 2012. Jacir led the first year of the Ashkal Alwan Home Workspace Program in Beirut (2011-2012) and created the curriculum and programming after serving on the founding year of the Curricular Committee from 2010-2011.
Awards
- On 17 October 2007 she won the ‘Leone d’Oro a un artista under 40’ – (Golden Lion for artists under 40), – at the 52nd Venice Biennale for “a practice that takes as its subject exile in general and the Palestinian issue in particular. Without recourse to exoticism, the work on display in the central Pavilion at the Giardini establishes and expands a crossover between cinema, archival documentation, narrative and sound.”
- She was the recipient of the 2007 Prince Claus Award, an annual prize from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, Hague, which described Jacir as “an exceptionally talented artist whose works seriously engage the implications of conflict.”
- She is the winner of the 2008 Hugo Boss Prize by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation .The Jury noted that she won the award for her “rigorous conceptual practice—comprising photography, video, performance, and installation-based work—bears witness to a culture torn by war and displacement. As a member of the Palestinian diaspora, she comments on issues of mobility (or the lack thereof), border crises, and historical amnesia through projects that unearth individual narratives and collective experiences.”
- She is the Visual Arts winner of the 2011 Alpert Award in the Arts
Emily Jacirr´s work
Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Which Were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948.
Stazione, Rialto, 2009
For years, artist Emily Jacir has addressed the political and social plight of Palestine through an intense and intimate concentration on the everyday. Jacir’s ability to poeticize the quotidian as a way of telling the story of a people – her people – earned her the 2008 Hugo Boss Prize.
Emily Jacir´s major work
– Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948 (2001)
– Where We Come From (2001-2003)
-Crossing Surda (2003)
-Accumulations (2005)
– Material for a film (2005-ongoing)
-Retracing bus no. 23 on the historic Jerusalem-Hebron Road (2006)
-Stazione (2009)
Biennales
International biennales which have featured her work:
- 2013 Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy
- DOCUMENTA (13)|2012 in Kassel, Germany
- 2011 Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy
- 2011 Sharjah Biennial in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
- 2009 Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy
- 2007 Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy, where she was awarded the ‘Leone d’Oro a un artista under 40’
- 2006 Sydney Biennale in Sydney, Australia
- 2005 Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy
- 2005 Sharjah Biennial in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
- 2004 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States
- The 2004 Gwangju Biennale in Gwangju, Korea.
- 2003 Istanbul Biennial in Istanbul, Turkey
Sources:
– http://edgeofarabia.com/artists/emily-jacir
-Beirut Art Center http://www.beirutartcenter.org/exhibitions.php?exhibid=86&statusid=3
– Alwan for the Arts
http://www.alwanforthearts.org/emily-jacir
Further reading:
– Exhibiting Politics: Palestinian-American Artist Emily Jacir Talks About her Work
– Palestinian artist Emily Jacir awarded top prize
http://electronicintifada.net/content/palestinian-artist-emily-jacir-awarded-top-prize/7859
– Material for a Palestinian’s Life and Death
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/arts/design/13jaci.html?_r=0
