Al-Ma'mal - Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem...

Artist in Residence Workshops Presentations & Creative Encounters Exhibitions

New Gate, Old City
Jerusalem 91145
P.O.Box 14644
T: (+972) 2 6283457
F: (+972) 2 6272312


/ Anne-Marie Filaire / Aris Georgiou / Beat Streuli / Contemporary Palestinian artists / Emily Jacir / Ghada Amer / Jawad Al-Malhi / Luc Chery / Peter Riedlinger / Roland Laboye / Scarlett Hooft Graafland / Walks in the City / workshop trainees / Zeyad Dajani / Zoe Leonard /
Anne-Marie Filaire Deserted Spaces 2002 2004 The exhibition features a selection of photographs. Deserted Spaces 2002-images of the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia join some images of the synagogue at Asmara.


Zeyad Dajani Out of Place 2004 The work in "Out of Place" came out of my residency at Al-Ma'mal in Jerusalem in 2003. This was my first visit to Jerusalem and Palestine having grown up as a Palestinian in Jordan. The palace that king Hussein of Jordan started building in East Jerusalem that was never completed and left unfinished after the 1967 war stands ironically over-looking Jerusalem. This abandoned palace is an anomaly, standing out of time and place.- Zeyad Dajani


Jawad Al-Malhi Art Workshop 2003 the exhibition at the premises of the al-ma'mal foundation features the artwork of 35 Palestinian children. the kids, aged 8 to 14, have completed a three-month art-workshop held at the Spafford children's center. the course was taught by the Palestinian artist Jawad Al-Malhi and Tina Sherwell, an artist and researcher from the united kingdom. the objective of the workshop was to expose the children to art and to cultivate important social values. the project which aimed at increasing civil society participation was organized by the al-ma'mal foundation and funded by the Tamkeen Project.


Luc Chery Les Habitats 2003 The exhibition "Les Habitats - Ode to the refugee camps" shows the works of the french photographer Luc Chery. Of the 20 photographs, half were taken in Gaza and the other half in Bordeaux. The photographs are of temporary structures, such as tents, shacks or other spaces enclosed by cloth or plastic sheeting. of the pictures taken in Gaza, not all were actually taken in refugee camps. The other half of the photos, which were taken in Bordeaux, show the assemblages from discarded materials that he has put together in the course of the past years. He used old plastic, fabric as well as furniture parts to construct small living spaces. As the exhibition presents photographs of refugee camps alongside miniatures built by Chery, it is sometimes hard to differentiate between Gaza and Bordeaux. Both convey a sense of confinement to an enclosed space.


Emily Jacir (im)mobility 2002 Inspired by the checkpoint question "did someone give you something to carry ?", Emily Jacir drew this project with issues of movement (the impossibility of it) and the ties of Palestinians to their homeland in mind. To start, she asked Palestinians living outside and who are not able to come to Palestine to send her their request of what they wanted her to do when she visits Palestine. To do that, she positions herself as both an outsider and an insider, holding the "golden ticket" (as she describes her American passport) who is able to maneuver over a terrain infested with an occupation that negates the natural evolvement of things and denies connection, communication and continuity. She is able to evade both physical and psychological barriers and move 'freely' where others can't. She's able to circumvent these obstacles and connect these people to their homelands, their wishes, their dreams. This provided some distinction between those, who have immediate/tangible requests like "pay a bill" and "bring arak" and those who have immaterial/spiritual requests like"light a candle" and "walk the streets". She then went to the places, carried out the requests and documented them. Al-ma'mal published number 15 of the "What's Up" giving a thorough documentation of Jacir's project.


Roland Laboye Jerusalem 1999-2001 2002 the exhibition shows photographs of the french photographer Roland Laboye, who is the director of a gallery in montpellier. the series of pictures was taken in the streets of Jerusalem during these years (1999 - 2001) and portray scenes of the everyday life. other pictures of the exhibition were simultaneously shown at the vision gallery of Neil Folberg, which cooperated in the project. Laboye saw this as "a small peace agreement" between the east and the west of the city and as an opportunity for an artistic dialogue.


Jumana Emil Abboud Art Workshop 2002 The exhibition at the al-ma'mal foundation presents the artwork of 35 children from the old city of Jerusalem. Youth, ages 8 to 14, have participated in an art workshop at the Burj Al-Laqlaq Community Center in a course taught by artist Jumana E. Abboud. The main idea behind the workshop was to develop an awareness of various art materials and learning to utilize the various tools for expression of self, reality and fantasy. The project was organized by Al-Ma'mal Foundation and funded by the Tamkeen Project.


workshop trainees Jerusalem ma ville 2002 the exhibition "Jerusalem, ma ville" presents a collection of 35 black and white photos. the pictures were taken by 13 students of the Al-Quds University throughout a workshop taught by the French photographer Luc Chery. the series of photos is the result of an introduction to photography as a means of artistic expression. the workshop has been carried out on the initiative of the French Consulate in cooperation with al-ma'mal foundation for contemporary art and the center for Jerusalem studies of the Al-Quds university.


Jawad Al-Malhi Art workshop 2002 the exhibition at the premises of the al-ma'mal foundation features the artwork of 35 Palestinian children. the kids, aged 8 to 14, have completed a three-month art-workshop held at the Spafford children's center. the course was taught by the Palestinian artist Jawad Al-Malhi and Tina Sherwell, an artist and researcher from the united kingdom. the objective of the workshop was to expose the children to art and to cultivate important social values. the project which aimed at increasing civil society participation was organized by the al-ma'mal foundation and funded by the Tamkeen Project.


Peter Riedlinger photography 2001


Jawad Al-Malhi spotlight 2001


workshop trainees Inauguration 2000


Ghada Amer Intimate confessions 2000


Scarlett Hooft Graafland Part time human 2000 "the town of Jerusalem is interesting for its historical meaning and the fact that three world religions have their holy places in the old city. this creates a specific atmosphere, which sometimes also can lead to madness. in my work i react on this madness and on the commerce around the figure of Jesus. in "parttime human" i am asking myself questions about "the real jesus", the same kind of questions the patients suffering from the "jerusalem syndrome" are dealing with. i made a big production of soap; big flocks of sheep led by figures of Jesus. i used the traditional soap from Nablus, a city in the westbank, made of pure olive oil without chemicals, a natural material which suits very well in the concept of the work. "meat" are a few ideas about hybrid meat forms. it is a reaction on the pieces of meat hanging in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, Hebron and Cairo. the last work, "42", the size of the shoes of king Abdallah, is a project inspired on king Abdallah of Jordan. there are stories about him that he sometimes sneaks out of his palace, dressed like an ordinary man to see what's going on among the common people. therefore i designed shoes you can wear in two ways; a royal official shoe which, if you turn it around, becomes an ordinary shoe. this idea arose when I visited the Egyptian museum in Cairo, where the pure golden shoes of pharao Toutanchamon are shown. finally, i managed to make an appointment with king Abdallah, with the help of his old rally-partner, who could also tell me the size of his shoes, because i wanted to ask the King if he could put the shoes on, to see if they would fit. unfortunately, when I was waiting in his palace in Amman, the message came that he had no time to see me so i left the shoes with a letter for the king behind at the guard of the palace"


Peter Riedlinger us/ them 2000 the photo exhibition of the swiss artist Peter Riedlinger presents a series of works under the loaded title "us / them". the concept us / them which he analyses, should be understood in its wider sense as the tension between two components of reality, not only between Israelis and Palestinians, but also between new and old, traditional and modern and even between reality and photography.


Beat Streuli East Jerusalem 1999


Aris Georgiou A greek in India 1999 "India is many other things. for me, Greek, different things than for you French or Palestinian, or Jew, or Norwegian. for all non-Indians it is at least a country of asia that exerts a power of attraction capable of stirring the most vivid curiosity. but it is so vast that it would almost be blaspheme to claim of having seen it when one spent a couple of weeks in a certain area. so i was there briefly. south India, Madras, now Chennal, Mysore, a little bit around. along with curiosity, all things that represented the land in fantasy congested in a temporary yet 'busy' state of mind. certainly not that of an enchanted pilgrim. nonetheless, that of a charmed observer who, as was the case before and after, carried his camera and recorded impressions and emotions."


workshop trainees Being here 1999


Zoe Leonard Solo exhibition 1999 "east 6th street, south 3rd street, pitt street, out my back window - all places in New York where most living things have a hard time surviving. Zoe's photographs of trees defying their confines can be applied to almost any situation of human struggle - man against the constraints of other humans, of nature, of himself. the most striking aspect of this body of work is its profound honesty. the frame dictates the content; the image is undoctored, unmediated, without prop. Leonard's work shares a sensibility with Kertesz's "exact moment", relying totally on instinct and emotion. they are slow photographs. they take time to be fully understood. like Kertesz's work, they take patience: patience to wait for all for the elements of the picture to come together at exactly the right moment. Cartier-Bresson was obsessed with the "decisive moment", depending more on calculation and planning of a photograph. while Leonard's work purposely steers away from such deliberation, she shares Cartier-Bresson's desire to capture incidental details, which might be symptomatic of some greater cultural whole. i chose these photographs for this exhibition at gallery anadiel because i thought they would translate well, addressing both the urban and social conditions of jerusalem. they are not visually coded. the physical and psychological state they articulate is human. Leonard has been known to say that the hardest thing is to take a simple picture. she's probably right. the second hardest thing is to put meaningful words with images that require no explanation."


workshop trainees inauguration 1999


Contemporary Palestinian artists Portraits 1999 the exhibition features photography works of contemporary Palestinian artists. among them Rula Halawani, Issa Frej, Awad Awad and Osama Silwadi.


Walks in the City \| 30-10-2008 To 15-11-2008 paintings, photographs and videos The works�exhibited at�Al-Ma'mal are results from youth art workshops. Two of these workshops, a�photography workshop with Jawad Al-Malhi, as well�as a�painting workshop with Jumana E. Abboud, were�implemented in the framework of The Jerusalem Show, 2008, edition 0.1, which was held under�the theme of 'Walks in the City'.�The three videos featured were produced by groups of youth in a workshop with Mario Rizzi in 2006 who produced projects under the theme of the city of Jerusalem. The workshops were conducted in cooperation with Burj Al-Laqlaq Community Center, Jerusalem, and Relief International. This project was made possible thanks to the generous grant from the Pontifical Mission and the Society for Austro-Arab Relations.


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