In Israel, Palestinian-Christian burial sites are often found vandalized and desecrated by members of other religious groups. Artist Dor Guez, founder of the Christian Palestinian Archive, has used his work to tell the stories of this minority group, their religious practices, and the discrimination waged against them for their heritage and beliefs. His exhibition 40 Days featured photographs from the Archive as well as video installations to narrate the losses of the Christian-minority families affected by this violence. Featuring a conversation between Guez and Mitra Abbaspour, associate curator in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, 40 Days illuminates the pain and endurance of Palestinian Christians living in a hostile land.
About the Artist
Dor Guez is a multi-disciplinary artist whose installations combine diverse modes of video and photographic practices. He is a lecturer in the History and Theory Department at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and researcher of archives affiliated with Tel Aviv University.
About the Contributors
Mitra Abbaspour is an art historian and curator. A doctoral candidate in Art History at the Graduate Center, CUNY, she is completing her dissertation, a study of photograph archives dedicated to Armenian, Kurdish, and pan-Arab practices. This study considers the ways in which photograph archives call on the history of the medium to represent modernity in the Middle East. From 2010 – 2014, she was Associate Curator in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, where she was a leader of a research initiative exploring the development of photographic modernism.
Omar Al-Qattan is a Palestinian Kuwaiti British film director and film producer and a cultural development expert. Al-Qattan graduated with a degree in English literature from Oxford University, and he studied film directing at the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacles (INSAS) in Brussels. His first film, Dreams & Silence, an early exploration of political Islam, won the prestigious 1991 Joris Ivens Award. In 1994, he produced Michel Khleifi’s Tale of the Three Jewels, shot entirely in the Occupied Gaza Strip. He has since worked on numerous films, including Khleifi’s Zindeeq. Al-Qattan is a founding member of the A. M. Qattan Foundation and established the Mosaic Rooms in London in 2008. Aside from working on various movies, Al-Qattan was the Chair of the 2013 and 2015 Shubbak Festival of Contemporary Arab Culture in London and is Chair of the Palestinian Museum in the Occupied Territories.
About the Publishers
The Mosaic Rooms are a London-based non-profit cultural organisation dedicated to supporting and promoting comtemporary culture from and about the Arab world through contemporary art exhibitions, multidisciplinary events, artist residencies and learning and engagement programme.
The A.M. Qattan Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit organisation founded in 1993 and registered in the UK as a charity. Its principle remit is the support of culture and education in and about Palestine and the Arab World.
