Emily Jacir (املي جاسر)

1970 born in Bethlehem, Palestine and lives and works between Ramallah, Palestine, and New York, USA.

As poetic as it is political and biographical, Emily Jacir’s work investigates histories of colonization, exchange, translation, transformation, resistance, and movement. Jacir has built a complex and compelling curve through a diverse range of media and methodologies that include unearthing historical material, performative gestures and in-depth research. She was awarded a Golden Lion at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007) for her work Material for a film; a Prince Claus Award from the Prince Claus Fund in The Hague (2007); the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum (2008); the Alpert Award (2011) from the Herb Alpert Foundation; and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome (2015).

Emily Jacir has had recent solo exhibitions at Alexander and Bonin, New York (2018); IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Dublin (2016–17); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015); Darat al Funun, Amman (2014–15); Beirut Art Center (2010); and the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2009). Her work has been in major international group exhibitions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; documental (13) (2012); five consecutive Venice Biennales; Sharjah Biennial (2011); 29th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2010); 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006); Sharjah Biennial 7 (2005); Whitney Biennial (2004); and the 8th Istanbul Biennial (2003).

In 2003, belongings, a monograph on a selection of Jacir’s work covering the period from 1998 through 2003 was published by O.K Books, with original essays by Edward Saïd, Stella Rollig, Christian Kravagna and John Menick. A second monograph Emily Jacir, featuring original texts by Murtaza Vali and Ronald Wäspe, was published by Verlag für Moderne Kunst Nürnberg in 2008 in conjunction with the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum in St. Gallen. Buchhandlung Walther König published Jacir’s book ex libris in 2012 in connection with dOCUMENTA(13). In 2015, The Khalid Shoman Foundation in Amman, Jordan, published A Star is as Far as the Eye Can See and as Near as My Eye is to Me (IdeaBooks, Amsterdam), the most extensive monograph to date on Jacir’s work in English and Arabic, with essays by Yazid Anani, Ahmad Zaatari and Adila Laïdi-Hanieh. In 2015, Whitechapel and IMMA co-published with Prestel a fully illustrated catalogue Europa, which included newly commissioned essays by Jean Fisher, Lorenzo Fusi, Omar Kholeif, Graziella Parati, and Nikos Papastergiadis, as well as an excerpt from Franco Cassanno’s “Southern Thought” chosen by Jacir. Europa features almost two decades of sculpture, film, drawings, large-scale installations and photography with a focus on Jacir’s work in Europe, in particular Italy and the Mediterranean. NERO in Rome, Italy published TRANSLATIO about the permanent installation Via Crucis at the Chiesa di San Raffaele in Milano in 2016.

Emily Jacir has been actively involved in education in Palestine since 2000 and is deeply invested in creating alternative spaces of knowledge production. She is the Founding Director of Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research in Bethlehem. She is one of the founders and was a full-time professor at the International Academy of Art Palestine in Ramallah from 2007 – 2017 (when the Academy closed) and she served on its Academic Board from 2006–2012. Jacir led the first year of the Ashkal Alwan Home Workspace Program in Beirut and created the curriculum and programming for 2011-12, serving on its Curricular Committee from 2010-11. Between 1999 – 2002, she curated several Arab and Palestinian Film programmes in New York City with Alwan for the Arts, while also teaching several workshops at Birzeit University. She conceived of and co-curated the first Palestine International Video Festival in Ramallah in 2002. In 2007 she curated a selection of shorts, Palestinian Revolution Cinema (1968 -1982) which toured internationally.