About the project
Period
ongoing since 2014
Location
Bethlehem
External links
Proposed by
Reem Fadda
Topics
Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research is an autonomous cultural centre located in our family home, built by my great-great grandfather al-Mukhtar Yusuf Jacir in 1890 in Bethlehem. This multi-faceted project is devoted to educational, cultural and research activities in a building in which the history and contemporary conditions of Bethlehem meet, enabling the production of new works of art and a vision towards the future. It is a learning hub for the Bethlehem community and beyond – a place to ask questions, exchange ideas, and grapple with our present-day situation.
Education and research are the key pillars behind our project. We are conducting workshops and seminars to facilitate the circulation of creative and intellectual endeavours across a range of disciplines and media – in particular, art and cinema. In the spring of 2018, we launched our programming with a workshop with Michael Rakowitz and a seminar with Alexandra Handal. Our residency program started this fall with Duncan Campbell, Adrian Paci, and Jumana Manna.
We are currently working on the Jacir Ottoman archives — a vast collection of rare visual and textual material from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Our mission includes reactivating the links between Bethlehem and the Bethlehemite community in Chile.
In July 2018, we began our first Landscape Residency with Vivien Sansour, who will conduct a workshop this October. In July, we also initiated a joint project with Rowwad, an art, education, and skills building community center in the heart of Aida refugee camp, that brings children to learn about agriculture.
Dar Jacir is supported by the A. M. Qattan Foundation through the ‘VAFF’ Project through June 2019. Our partner institution is IPS (the Institute of Palestine Studies), with whom we are also collaborating on the archive.
About the artist
As poetic as it is political and biographical, 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. She has been actively involved in education in Palestine since 2000 and deeply invested in creating alternative spaces of knowledge production.
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