Ramallah – fairest of them all?

Research is keeping me busy, and at the same time I seem to be suffering from either a summer cold or allergies. Nonetheless, I will try to persist with blogging.

A couple of days ago, I had the pleasure of attending the opening of the exhibition ‘Ramallah – fairest of them all?’ curated by Vera Tamari & Yazid Anani at the Ethnographic & Art Museum, Birzeit University. From the catalogue:

‘Ramallah – the fairest of them all?’ is a self-reflection on Ramallah’s struggle for the title as the fairest of them all? It is an inquisition about the conflict between past and present, about change and coming to terms with new realities through two complimentary, yet separate exhibitions on social history and the contemporaneity of Ramallah. ‘Ramallah – the fairest of them all?’ is an interplay between the duality of exhibition space and urban space, social activism and archeology of social history, public intervention and display.

The gallery exhibition – Ramallah in the past – is a wonderful archive of different civic pasts. This includes a ‘salon’ installation (the living room kept ‘nice’ for guests), a display of sepia wedding photographs, and a large collection of photographs of Ramallah ‘life’ 50-60 year ago. This last collection includes couples socializing in mixed gendered environments; the women wearing skirts above the knee and sleeveless dresses, the men wearing well-cut suits. While at first blush the public morality governing these ways of dressing seems very different from today’s Ramallah (see next paragraph), it is of course possible that these people might well have been more affluent, and perhaps in that sense there is a line of continuity between now and then (which is to say, it is possible to go to certain parts of contemporary Ramallah, and take very similar photographs).

The urban exhibition – Ramallah today – is a set of installations located around Ramallah city centre. There are three different works, two of which are currently present absences. Al Riyadh, a billboard size satire of current neoliberal urban development in the city that is governed by the ideas and dictates of large transnational businesses rather than local architectural vernaculars and communal needs, and Projection, a poster (advertising the film Abi Fawk Al Shajarah) depicting a couple about to engage in a passionate kiss, were both censored (i.e. removed) by the municipality. The only way they are now ‘presenced’ in the city is through small postcards – available at the Ethnographic & Art Museum - that were intended to guide audiences to their locations. They billboards and posters are now displayed around the Birzeit University campus. Only the final piece ‘What’s wrong about having a normal life in Ramallah’ by the dynamic Ramallah Syndrome collective, remains in the city itself. The work poses a series of questions on canvas about what it means to live in Ramallah currently amid the changes that have occurred over the recent two decades. These are being displayed in a number of coffee shops. Other coffee shops refused.

What struck me about the exhibition as a whole was its introverted nature. By this I mean that it staged a conversation that was very much for local people (local here defined primarily as Ramallah, but also Palestinians from other parts of the West Bank). This contrasts quite markedly with most contemporary Palestinians discourses (whether artistic or otherwise), that engage with a whole range of external others (often by necessity). Hence, in this context, what I’ve referred to as introversion is an achievement. It is a crafting or establishment of a more enclosed space, where an ‘internal’ discussion can occur that otherwise wouldn’t. And thus (and this may seem like something of a paradox) it also establishes a space that goes beyond (‘outside’) the familiar.

Well worth a visit if you’re in town!