In Ex Libris, Emily Jacir (born 1970) commemorates the approximately 30,000 books that were looted by Israel in 1948 from Palestinian homes and institutions. Six thousand of these books are held at the Jewish National Library of Israel under the designation “A.P.” (Abandoned Property). Jacir photographed these books during repeated visits to the library.
Published by Verlag für moderne Kunst. Text by Adiana Shibli, Rasha Salt.
A Palestinian living in New York, Emily Jacir became known for her text and photo piece “Where We Come From” (2003), which was shown in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. The work documents Jacir’s travels through Palestine--with the liberty of her U.S. passport--performing tasks from the mundane to the poignant for nearly 30 exiled Palestinians from around the world. Jacir, who was born in 1970, takes on such highly fraught collisions of culture, religion and politics with conceptually complex yet elegant and emotionally moving means of resistance. This publication collects recent works, including “From Paris to Riyadh,” (1999–2001). In this central work, Jacir, now one of the Middle East’s most important contemporary artists, aims to illuminate the overlap between western culture and Arab values by making pencil drawings over the naked skin of models in glossy magazines, censoring certain areas according to custom.
Published by Folio. Essays by Edward Said, Christian Kravagna, Stella Rollig, and John Menick. Introduction by Martin Sturm.
Emily Jacir is an artist who lives in between New York and Ramallah. It's no surprise that a central motif in her work is the theme of voluntary and coerced movement between places and cultures. The projects she has undertaken over the past five years have pungently, poignantly crossed the divides between art, life, politics and culture over and over again. In “Where We Come From,” Jacir, armed with an American passport, crossed borders in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip fulfilling everyday requests for fellow Palestinians unable to move so freely. In “Sexy Semite,” she placed ads in the Village Voice, a “Hot Palestinian Semite” seeking “Jewish soul mate” and the like. And in “Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948,” Jacir installed a refugee tent in her studio in Lower Manhattan and invited friends and strangers to help her embroider the village names. Belongings is the first monograph published on her work.
PUBLISHER Folio
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 6 x 7.75 in. / 96 pgs / 50 color / 8 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 8/2/2004 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2004
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9783852562650TRADE List Price: $25.00 CDN $30.00
Emily Jacir
Emily Jacir: Belongings