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Ramallah Now
Yazid Anani and Emily Jacir
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Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? The infamous assertion from the
fairytale of Snow White by the wicked Queen shows explicitly the ‘mirror’ as a medium in
which one is critical and aware of his own reflection, his being, his existence, and his form
in a particular context. The queen kept asking the mirror about her contested ‘fairness’;
unraveling threads of insecurities, the dark side, her reign, and her fight for the title as
the fairest of them all? The ‘mirror’ exists in our homes, reflecting our deepest fears and
secrets is thus a medium that enables one to reflect, change, explore, and reform in
context and in being.
‘Art is the image of a human being’ as stated by Joseph Beuys. Art is a ‘mirror’ where
one can see the reflection of his otherness. The mirror recreates the image of the context
it inhabits and at the same time one can perceive the context and its character through
it. Hence, art is not an alien to its spatial realm; it reflects all the processes, events,
objects, and structures of that realm. When people are confronted with art, then they are
in reality confronted with their own self; hence, they open their own eyes and reflect on
their freedom, autonomy, and their role in society.
Six artists, four interventions create a mirror through which Ramallah’s contemporary
image is reconstructed. The city itself becomes an exhibition where people stare back in
inquisition at the different art forms from billboards, and posters to vitrined trash, reflecting
on local spatial issues of modernity, architecture, politics, society, identity and change.
Yazid Anani - Curator
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Location : Ramallah
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Date of work : 2010
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