Taken from alter.quebec
In a context where “Palestinian voices are often censored or struggle to be heard”, curators Ariane De Blois and Muhammad Nour ElKairy wanted to highlight the work of artists of Palestinian origin. The twelve works presented at Plein Sud were chosen for their relationship to language, the central theme of the exhibition.
“The exhibition starts from the principle that language is political,” explains Ariane De Blois in an interview for Plein Sud. The exhibited works use language as a means of making Palestinian realities visible, questioning questions such as identity, land, exile, and genocide.
However, language takes different forms depending on the work: handwritten, digital, audio, video… We find, for example, the work What the actual fuck? by the artist Amal Al Nakhala, a war diary combining text and sketches on the forced displacements she underwent with her loved ones. There is also the work Vibrations de Gaza, in which Rehab Nazzal films deaf children recounting the bombings of Israeli forces. In another register, an extract from the book The racists have never seen the sea by Yara El-Ghadban is displayed.
In terms of sound, we hear in the exhibition room the sounds of military drones and a digital keyboard being typed, coming from two separate works. An atmosphere that mixes the sounds of war and writing, immersing the public in the issues raised by the exhibition. As for the layout of the premises, the single exhibition room allows you to have an overview of all the works, and to move around in the desired direction. The space was designed as an “agora”, a “meeting place” around Palestinian voices and imaginations, in the words of the exhibition curators.
A particular context
The Plein Sud premises being located in the Cégep Édouard Montpetit, the exhibition welcomes many students. The general director of Plein Sud, Hélène Poirier, considers this location in a “really interesting” school environment, given the “educational mission” of contemporary Art, sometimes too isolated and reserved for a “small elite”. Teachers are also among the visitors, as are contemporary art lovers. Groups of newcomers in French studies also used to go to the exhibition, but the visits were ultimately canceled due to “too much emotional load”.
This is “the first time that one of our exhibitions has been so topical”, according to Hélène Poirier. Although contemporary art deals more and more with socio-political questions, P for Palestine is part of a rare geopolitical and media context for an exhibition.
The P for Palestine exhibition is on until December 14 at the Plein Sud exhibition center in Longueuil, and simultaneously at the L’Œil de Poisson artist center, in Quebec, until December 15
Related News :