WE HAVE WOVEN THE MOTHERLANDS WITH NETS OF IRON
Winner of the 2011 Apex Art Franchise Award
I am co-curator of an exhibition of artists working in countries involved in the historic project of the Hejaz Railway (Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria and Jordan). The exhibition will be held in Amman, Jordan in May/June 2011. Above is a blog I am maintaining with my co-curator, Toleen Touq. Below is a description of the themes of the exhibition.
The initial inspiration for this exhibition was the Hejaz Railway. Built at the end of the Ottoman empire in defiance of Western powers, the Hejaz represented an ambitious modern infrastructure project, an bold pan-Islamic endeavor, a physical reminder of the connection that once existed before national lines were drawn by European powers. Now, it stands nearly idle, a relic for tourists and history buffs and a reminder of what the empires of the 20th century left behind.
We are using the Hejaz Railway as a symbol of this past, and through our research and travels in the region we have come to three questions that we will be exploring through the work of artists in this exhibition:
What are the borders in the region that define identity; what do they contain and what do they allow to pass through?
What remains of the time when borders did not exist?
Where does being Arab and being Turkish reside now?
What do we do with these remains to move forward?
The artists, mainly from the nations involved in the construction of the Hejaz and working in various mediums, will respond to these questions in light of history and of the current revival of historical projects, like pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism, that aimed to barrel through national borders in the same manner as do the tracks of the Hejaz. |
