In Jaffa and the Present Absence: A Collection of Loss – The Art Collection of Zahi W. Khouri. Edited by Zina Zarour and Faris Shomali. Zahi W. Khouri: 33-40, (2024).
In the recent intricate weave of Palestine’s art world and, by extension, the broader Arab milieu, the figure of the collector has emerged with newfound prominence. While collectors are not a novel emergence in Palestine’s art milieu, their presence has grown more conspicuous. Over the past two decades, the modern and contemporary Arab art market has burgeoned, and Palestine’s art has experienced a greater integration into the fabric of the global art world. This confluence demands a deeper examination of these mysterious figures. Nonetheless, despite the expanding corpus of literature on the nexus of arts and Palestine, the figure of the collector remains underexamined. Therefore, this essay steps zero in this exploration.
With a particular focus on the unique meaning of being a collector in—or of—Palestine, a place continually subjected to settler colonial erasure, dispossession, and dispersion, this examination aims to contextualize the practice of art collecting in Palestine in the broader context of loss, preservation, and cultural production. Attention is also drawn to collectors’ subtle, albeit fundamental, influence on cultural production, potentially evolving into cultural producers themselves.