Marius Holtan is moved by an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery.
The highlight of the Emily Jacir: Europa exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery is an installation begun in 2004 by Jacir entitled Material for Film, about the life and death of Wael Zuaiter.
Zuaiter was a Palestinian translator shot 11 times by Mossad agents in 1972, for his alleged involvement in the murder of 11 Israelis at the Munich Olympics earlier that year.
Through letters, family photographs, audio snippets of his translations and other documents, Zuaiter’s story is reimagined over the vast white walls of the East London Gallery.
Emily Jacir is a Palestinian artist who was awarded the Golden Lion for Artists Under 40 at the 2007 Venice Biennale.
Her work explores the Palestinian/Israeli conflict with simplicity and lyricism – and provoked feelings of sadness in me that I found extremely powerful, which I have tried to evoke through a short film I made on my phone.
The exhibition will remain at Whitechapel Gallery until January 3rd, before moving on to the Irish Museum of Modern Art.