Inass Yassin Studio: Palestinian artist
September 2013-February 2014
Palestinian Political Posters Palestinian Political Posters is an art exhibition of more than 140 original political posters about Palestine taken from the private collections of George Michael Al Ama and Saleh Abd Al Jawad. These unique posters were produced between the years 1949 and 2000. They offer an insight into the various themes and visual representations that were commonly circulating with regards to the Palestinian question at the time. Worth noting is that the exhibition is not to be seen as a survey of all political posters; to this end, it does not cover all the topics that Palestinian posters dealt with during these five decades. Nevertheless, it attempts to provide an opportunity for the viewer to examine a variety of popular representational modes in the development of political poster art in Palestine and abroad. This exploration can further contribute to the understanding of how these posters impacted on the shaping of the collective perception of Palestinian national identity. The thematic display of the exhibition includes, but is not limited to, the subjects of: the refugees, the First Intifada, continuous and random closures of Palestinian universities, the hero-martyr figure, political parties, and student movements. Birzeit University Museum wishes to highlight through this exhibition the significant role owners of private collections- whether individuals or institutions- have played as tools to generate knowledge. The Museum would like to extend its sincere gratitude to the researchers and collectors George Michael Al Ama and Dr. Saleh Abd Al Jawad for their contribution and for generously offering their collections for display.
Curating the exhibition took into consideration two main aspects; the chronological order of issuing the posters, and the organizations and parties that were responsible for their production.
Curators: Inass Yassin.Place: Birzeit University Museum
Framed-Unframed: The Changing Representation of Women in Palestinian Art
Co-curators: Vera Tamari, Inass Yassin
Birzeit University Museum, Palestine.
19 September - 29 October 2011
This exhibition presents varying images of the female in Palestinian art produced by successive generations of male and female artists from the 1970s up to the present. The works selected encompass both changes in the intellectual and visual approaches underlying representations of the female form. The diversity of form, content and artistic media selected for the exhibition in many ways parallel the changing social, economic, political and gendered environment prevailing in Palestine. The collection constitutes an affluent reflection on women, their status and representation through various artistic modes and concepts. The viewer is thus invited to contemplate in the reason behind employing the figure of women in these works; what is she being used to represent and how is she made visible? How the image of women is received and interpreted? And what do these images have to say to us about our changing times, about perspectives on Palestinian women or about the idea of Palestine itself? And do male and female artists treat women as a subject (or object) in the same or different ways? To this end, four pillars make up the curating of this exhibition: political representation, the frame of heroism, indications of loss and hope, and the question: where does the body stand?
The idea of this exhibition was brought to fruition by the enigmatic exchange and innovative dialogue that took place between Birzeit University Museum and the Institute of Women’s Studies (IWS). As importantly, the exhibition would have not been realized without the generous sponsorship of the Institute of Women’s Studies (IWS).