Dor Guez’s solo exhibition at the Center for Contemporary Art comprises the second of the five-part project, “The Sick Man of Europe.” The first part of the project took place...
Dor Guez’s solo exhibition at the Center for Contemporary Art comprises the second of the five-part project, “The Sick Man of Europe.” The first part of the project took place at the ICA, London. The exhibitions include work in various mediums such as video, installation, photography, and sound. “The Sick Man of Europe” is a term taken from the end of the 19th century to describe the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Guez uses it to examine the military history of several states in the Middle East through the stories of artists who were recruited to the army and took part in various 20th century wars. The wars left their mark on the artists, who stopped creating work once they became soldiers. The exhibition at the CCA, “The Sick Man of Europe: The Architect,” focuses on the story of Kemal P., an architecture student who was recruited to the Turkish army just after he graduated. A two-channel video focuses on 13 of Kemal’s photographs from 1939 that document the Turkish Republic’s Victory Day Parade in Ankara in August of the same year, and the funeral of the secularizing republic leader, Kemal Ataturk, that took place a few weeks later. By photographing buildings, monuments, and squares, Kemal P. follows the architectural changes that took place in Turkey through its transformation from an empire to a republic, from Ottoman to Turkish. Parallel to documenting the historic evolution of Turkey, a story of friendship unfolds in the photographs between Kemal and Muhammad, both revealed as great admirers of Ataturk and the new, secular Turkey. The exhibition also includes photographs from Kemal’s private collection, including thousands of photos of uniformed men (i.e. soldiers, policemen, scouts) in military parades, army camps, field training, studio poses, and group, couple, and individual portraits. Dor Guez developed an artistic practice based on his personal history. By means of genealogical research he addresses an issue deeply rooted in the history of his homeland of Israel – the relationship between different ethnic groups who share the same nationality. As a common denominator his works share a tension that runs through the country which mirrors itself in his own family: His grandmother, Samira, links the Jewish Israeli Guez to the Christian Arab minority to which that branch of his family belongs. The Christian-Arab minority is a reference group which until now has not received significant attention as a differentiated ethnic group in the cultural field. The basis for one of his new series’ of images, SCANOGRAMS #1 (2010), are the old, torn, worn out photographs of Samira and her relatives, documenting the important events of their lives at a point in the past before the family was dispersed from Jaffa to Lod, Amman, Cyprus, Cairo and London. Dating from the year 1938 to 1958, the fifteen scenes portray Samira and her siblings. Several images from this series depict Samira’s wedding to Jacob in the ghetto of Lod in 1949, one year after what was a canonical date for them: July 13th, 1948. On this day, the city of Lod - or Al-Lydd, its Palestinian name - was occupied by the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organization. Less than one thousand citizens stayed, hiding in the local church, which later became the center of Lod’s ghetto - a small area fenced off with barbed wire and under the rule of the Israeli military. In the end, 95 % of Al-Lydd’s population was displaced.
Scanograms #2, 2011 The thematic series ‘Scanograms # 2’ is taken from Guez’s Christian- Palestinian Archive, which he has been compiling continually over the past three years. Ongoing and adaptive archiving practices are a major component for producing and forming a culture’s collective identity. Guez’s project is the first archive dedicated to the Christian-Palestinian community, a territorially spread out and disjointed series of communities, for whom Christianity is the common denominator. The archive’s starting point was the artist’s own family’s albums, which include testimonies of the life of the Christian- Palestinian minority. Today the archive has grown to include thousands of photographs and documents from the first half of the 20th century, representing communities in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Israel and Palestine. The project’s main goal is to create an online visual database, which will document and present the community and its history and will be accessible to the general public. The installation ‘Scanograms # 2’ contains nine black wooden objects, each presenting passport pages from the British Mandate of Palestine, before Israel was established. Each of the nine objects is presented alongside written testimonies in Arabic, which the artist has recorded over the past few years as part of the archive project. The visa stamps (from Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan etc.) and the testimonies evoke an image of a very different region than we know today, an open Middle East, with free mobility and open borders. The last stamp in the record is from 1947.
