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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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Raeda Saadeh
Untitled-Photographs
2003
Born in Um Al-Fahem 1977. Lives and works in Jerusalem.
Exhibitions include, Immaterial, Gallery Anadiel, Jerusalem (solo 2003). The New Shehrazades, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona; ArtFocus, Jerusalem (2003). Le Corps comme Territoire, Rencontres Arles, France (2002). In weiter Ferne, so nah, IFA Galleries, Berlin (2001). There, School of Visual Arts, New York (2000).
Raeda Saadeh first worked with Al-Ma’mal as part of the Workshops program and was invited to the artist-in-residence program in the autumn of 2002. Immaterial, is the title of Saadeh’s work created during her residency which concentrated on memory significance as represented through the imagery of youth. One entered the gallery space of Gallery Anadiel only to enter a children’s playground, full of sculptures depicting children engaged in typical outdoor childhood games- some children are skipping, some hanging in midair on a swing, others playing together on the sand-filled ground. The numerous sculptural installations, constructed of wire and clothed in usual children’s clothing are incomplete in physical form; relating to the artist’s reflection on the recalling of dreams, where dream characters may be difficult to remember or to identify clearly. Saadeh refers to children growing up on the streets, who are like dream characters; we know that they are there but we cannot recognize their faces or their identities as we consider them not to be important (immaterial).
Saadeh’s performance, photography and video installation work often deal with female sexuality in universal as well as personal terms, where the female body is dealt with in a most provocative and courageous way. The artist strips the imagery of the Orientalist imagination, (the veiled women in particular) down to its bare reality while challenging any interpretation drawn solely according to nationalized borders.
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