Curatorial Expeditions: The Ramallah Safari

The last twenty-five years have witnessed significant transformation in the geopolitics of Palestinian art.[2] From the outset, we need to consider a definition of Palestinian art by recognizing that it is not art that is specifically created in one place, but that, owing to the history of dispossession and diaspora, Palestinian artists can be found all over the world. Therefore, Palestinian art necessarily starts from multiple sites of enunciation and is inevitably influenced by site and location. As Stuart Hall suggests, “identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, position ourselves within, the narratives of the past.”[3] For the purposes of this paper, I will mainly be focusing on the art of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories, while touching on the production of artists based in various other locations around the globe. I will first provide some context to the development of art practices, before specifically going on to speak about curatorial practices in relation to how the work of Palestinian artists is curated by international curators.