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Museum of Contemporary Art – Palestine (CAMP):
The Museum of Contemporary Art (CAMP) was established to relate to one of the core Palestinian experiences – displacement; as well as to account for the growing collection of visual art that has been safeguarded by Al-Ma’mal over the past ten years. There was/is a need to create a lever for new opportunities, innovative thought, and dynamic multi-cultural activity within, and surrounding Palestinian art, culture, and environment. Our goal is to utilize CAMP to relate to Palestine and its rich and multifaceted textures (traditional/ historical backdrop embedded within contemporary ambitions), while encouraging and strengthening international communications as well. We believe that a contemporary art museum must be a flexible, living organism; an expanding space that will facilitate the realization of cultural projects, empower creative individuals of all nationalities, and avoid stagnation that might otherwise act negatively in like developments. For this reason, we envision CAMP’s essence not solely as a physical place (for that would undermine our working philosophy and limit creative potential), but as an authentic, accessible, and fluid entity, a nomadic site where dialogue, growth, and resourceful experimentation are encouraged.
Our project involves the biennial 'nomadic' movement of CAMP, its cumulative art collection and 'portable' structure. Every year, CAMP will find a temporary 'home' under the auspices of a 'host museum.' The 'host museums' – located across the globe – will be invited to interact with CAMP's presence and to initiate projects and exhibitions.
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Mona Hatoum
Present Tense
1996
Born in 1952 in Beirut. Lives and works in London.
Solo Exhibitions include The Entire World as a Foreign Land, Tate Britian, London (2000). Art Pace Foundation for Contemporary Art, San Antonio, Texas (1999). Museum of Modern Art, Oxford and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinborough (1998). Galerie Rene Blouin, Montreal (1997). Present Tense, Gallery Anadiel, Jerusalem (1996). Group Exhibitions include: Vision and Reality, Louisianna Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Between Cinema and a Hard Place, Tate Modern, London (2000). The Century of The Body, Photoworks 1900-2000, Culturgest, Lisbon (1999). Cairo Biennial, Cairo; XXIV Biennial Sao Paulo, Brazil (1998).
As a Palestinian born in exile, Hatoum’s visit to Jerusalem was of personal significance. The artist-in-residence program provided the artist with her first visit to Jerusalem. During her residency, Hatoum came across a map which showed the territorial divisions of the country arrived at under the Oslo agreement. The map was about dividing and controlling the area since Israel exercises a closure policy so that Arabs are completely isolated or denied access through various passages. In Present Tense, Hatoum constructed an installation in the center of the Gallery Anadiel floor by bringing together the map and merging it with local soap made from pure olive oil. She pressed tiny red beads into the soap drawing an outline of the map she was making reference to. For Hatoum, the soap was a symbol of resistance, and was utilized as well for its transitory nature, since it is produced by using traditional Palestinian methods. At the time of Hatoum’s visit, the soap factory in Nablus was still open and functioning, which unfortunately is not the case today, after Israeli forces saw to it’s destruction.
Through performance, video, sculpture and installation, Mona Hatoum creates architectonic spaces which relate to the body, language, and the condition of exile. She questions the barriers that keep us divided and enclosed, whether those barriers are described as physical, mental, ethnic, cultural, sexual, religious or economic. Hatoum imbeds the subject and meaning into the material she utilizes, choosing the material as an extension to the concept or at times, in opposition to it, to create a contradictory and paradoxical situation of attraction and repulsion, fascination and revulsion.
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