Curated by Faris Shomali & Zaina Zarour
Alserkal Arts Foundation | 17 November – 8 December 2024.
The history of Palestine’s art is commonly portrayed as that of loss, fragmentation, colonial plunder and destruction. This exhibition presents an alternative historiography—one in which artworks defy attempts of erasure.
Through constellations of artworks, archival material, and field notes, Made Present outlines biographies of artworks that have persevered. It foregrounds the extensive history of artists going to great lengths, sometimes risking their own lives, to make their works present. This alternative view shifts the focus from the coloniser to the colonised. It places Palestinian agency at the heart of the story, casting artists as its protagonists. This is not a tale about the suffering subject, but about resistance.
Made Present shows canvases unearthed from beneath the debris, artworks that artists made sure not to leave behind when world-annihilating violence knocked on their doors, and creations by rediscovered artists, once pushed out of history by the rupture of the Nakba.
Photos by: Seeing Things Studio