Review: KSCC Summer School

 The exhibition marks the culmination of an intense month of art practice and lectures for students who participated in the KSCC Summer School. This year's summer school was the third year of summer schools initiated by KSCC aimed at developing advancing understanding of contemporary art practice. This year's course combined both practical and theory sessions given by Dr. Tina Sherwell from The Paltel Virtual Gallery at Birzeit University and Henrik Placht from The Oslo Academy of Fine Arts.

 The participants created a wide range of different art works, using different methods and ideas current in contemporary art. The exhibition included site specific installations, photography, painting and sculpture. Maliha Maslamani explored the physical space of the gallery by using coloured wool. With the threads she drew in space, to create a matrix which dissected the space creating numerous lines and shadows. Inass Hamad Yassin began by wanting to create a self portrait of her experiences, but her final project took the form of a photographic work in which she mimicked the pose and style of an advertisement for an exhibition of the artist William Eggleston’s night club portraits from 1973. This interventionist work was both humorous and sad. By imaging herself in the position of the clubber she spoke of her identity as young Palestinian woman and the spaces both of permissibility, youth culture, fantasy and difference.

 Rana Yassin also used the medium of photography to create a work that explored the cultural significance of marriage and female aspirations of being a bride. Sameh Aboshi’s readymade was a shop sign taken from a small store in al Bireh which has been closed since the Intifada. The faded sign of the mini market called the Arab Dream framed by coca cola logos captured both the relationship of the local and the global, of consumerism and the fate of political situation of the region at the same time as conveying a sense of melancholy. Jumana Manna’a ‘State of Waiting,' was comprised of a series of portraits of everyday Palestinians; the eldery, children, young men, captured in different places such as Qalandia, the Old City of Jerusalem and so forth. The close ups show the dignity of Palestinians as well as the passage of time as each are in different states of comtemplation. Mohamad Shalabi's ideas centred around exploring different ways of representing the collective plight of Palestinians.  For his final work, ‘Memory’ he chose to use the elements of salt and cactus as metaphors and symbols of Palestinian experiences.

 Ali Naji's installation focused on the history of Palestinian martyrs, whose graves inside Israel are unknown, their place of burial simply marked by a number. Using soil and photographs from the families he created a memorial inside the gallery space. Lana Judeh and Suha Jarrar explored different techniques of abstraction in their paintings. Judeh explored geometrical forms and the way different optical sensations of space could be created while Jarrar explored the possibilities expressive brushwork and different ways of manipulating paint. Doa’a Alabo, one of the youngest participants in the program, chose classical techniques of oil painting with which, through the symbol of the olive tree, represented the experience of the siege.

 The exhibition brought together the energy and experiences of the participants who came from different places in Palestine, backgrounds and different generations.  Recurring throughout their work were explorations of the issues of identity, time, space and place and the artistic mediums of expression.

 Tina Sherwell, August 2005