The exhibition, curated by Sara Alberani and promoted by the Municipality of Brescia and the Fondazione Brescia Musei, brings together works by artists from conflict zones — in particular from the Middle Eastern region today marked by divisions and fragmentations – from Gaza to the West Bank to Lebanon — who have personally experienced the daily reality of war and exile.
Bringing their artistic and cultural testimony are the international Palestinian artists Mohammed Al-Hawajri, Dina Mattar and Emily Jacir (Golden Lion at Venice in 2007) and the Lebanese artist Haig Aivazian.
The title, Material for an Exhibition, pays homage to the work Material for a Film by Emily Jacir and refers to the plurality of languages – installations, video, photography, painting, drawings – that meet in the exhibition, but also to the difficult material conditions in which many artists work, often marked by the loss of works, archives, places of memory and stories passed down by those who are no longer here.
The exhibition proposes a vision that goes beyond the victimhood/criminalization dichotomy in which public discourse around the Palestinian cause and, more generally, the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean context risks being crystallized, and intends to underline the value of art as a means to defend and consolidate bonds of solidarity between the different geographies of the Mediterranean, opening spaces of learning and confrontation in which it is possible to imagine different alternatives to war scenarios.
The works in the exhibition are the result of major international loans and come from New York, from the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Athens and from the Sharjah Art Foundation in Sharjah: they include works made in residencies and some reproductions of which only digital traces exist because the originals were destroyed.
ph Emily Jacir, Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948, 2001; a work in progress consisting of a refugee tent and embroidery thread, mixed media and a record book; variable dimensions; Purchased in 2004; Collection of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
