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Against Erasures : Commemoration of Loss in the Artwork of Emily Jacir and Eman Haram
Abstract
Palestinian artistic production in the diaspora has been gaining considerable international attention and recognition in the last decade. One can name the examples of such filmmakers as Elia Suleiman, Hany Abou Assad, and Anne-Marie Jacer, as well as of artists such as Mona Hattoum and Emily Jacer. Such visibility is testimony to the aesthetic innovations of the young artists and is critical to the dissemination of historically marginalized perspectives. Yet the study of the contribution of these artists remains in its inception. The visual artwork of Emily Jacer, « Where We Come From, » also included in Belongings, and Eman Haram’s photo exhibit, « Involuntary Memory, » inscribe a memory, intimate and plural, fluid and performative, across many displacements, that resists systematic erasure. Through different media, their work becomes a conscious intervention to counter such historical effacements and violent fragmentations. Rather than simply preserving a memory of what was, of the home before any displacement or loss, Jacer and Haram present a reflection on the effacement of collective memory and on the loss inherent in any displacement. Loss is no longer of an event passed but emerges as a continual experience of dispossession. One notes a dynamic search for form that could speak to the loss. Their production reveals how the political need not be at odds with the aesthetic. If the political is reconfigured, as it is in their art, as the concern for the other and the insistence on the human, then art may well be intrinsically political. The human dimension of loss and the fundamental need for memory in their artwork transcends any particular identity without eclipsing the historical.
Discipline
Media Arts
Geographic Area
Other
Palestine
Sub Area
None