[Nettime-nl] Sander Buyck - West Bank Walls

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

Sander Buyck - West Bank Walls

27.05.2011 _ 19.06.2011

Opening on 27.05.2011, 8.30 pm with a conversation (in Dutch) between  
artists Sander Buyck and Renzo Martens and curator Remco de Blaaij  
(Van Abbemuseum). Moderation: Els Roelandt (A Prior Magazine)

Commissioned by A Prior Magazine during the autumn of 2010,  
photographer Sander Buyck spent a few months in Palestine. There he  
worked on what would become the West Bank Walls project, a series of  
street scenes in Palestine. Buyck journeyed - aside from Gaza - to all  
of Palestine and stayed with Palestinian families who offered him  
shelter and helped him in his travels throughout the country. Mobility  
is a great central problem in Palestine and navigating from one city  
to another is no easy task, which is severely hampered by Israeli  
authorities. Not only do the presence of border crossings make  
mobility difficult, but there are also miles of walls, barriers and  
cumbersome administrative formalities. Jerusalem has thereby become  
the symbol of an inaccessible city. Palestinians have to drive for  
hours to cover relatively small distances due the fact that the well- 
constructed main roads are only accessible to Israelis. They use the  
small and poorly maintained roads, criss-crossing villages where no  
settlers are to be found. Omnipresent walls dominate the landscape and  
streetscape there.
During his trip Buyck focused on numerous weathered posters that  
appear upon the walls throughout the towns and cities. The tattered  
posters are not removed and discarded for they are tributes to various  
martyrs of the Palestinian cause, each a portrait with the date and  
place where the individual died. The concept of "martyrdom" in Islam  
has a special meaning: it signifies "every one who dies in the way of  
God." Honouring martyrs in the Qur'an is also described as one of the  
main duties of a good Muslim. Through the personal stories of the  
martyrs Buyck brings forward a small part of the personal daily  
struggle of the Palestinians, showing how in every aspect of daily  
life the occupation and religion are tangible.

For the exhibition West Bank Walls Buyck selected photos of three  
martyrs, which will be hung in various public spaces within Aalst.  
These photos confront the casual passer-by with the weathered images  
of anonymous, mostly young Palestinians. Thus, a piece of the  
Palestinian daily reality is infiltrated to us at a micro level.

A second part of the West Bank Walls exhibition shown in Netwerk  
depicts different street images from the towns of Nablous, Bethlehem,  
Ramallah, Jerusalem and Yafa.

A Prior Magazine, who will publish the full set of martyr photos in  
its 22nd edition, “Picasso in Palestine” (released in the fall), hopes  
this project will place the media overexposure of violence in the  
region in another light and illuminates the problem from another, more  
personal and relevant perspective.

The project West Bank Walls is part of the exhibition “Picasso in  
Palestine, A Modern Icon in Ramallah”. In June 2011 “Picasso in  
Palestine” will bring for the first time in history a painting by  
Picasso to Palestine (Buste de Femme, 1943). It will be shown in the  
International Academy of Art Palestine and comes by virtue of a simple  
loan request. The Van Abbe Museum, who will loan the work, together  
with the Palestinian Academy has made every effort to ensure that  
this  -unfortunately unusual loan – becomes a reality. The realization  
of this project was and is an extremely complex undertaking involving  
not only academic questions concerning the relationship between art,  
politics and geopolitics but also what the actual journey entailed for  
the painting and all parties involved.


All information on:
www.aprior.org

www.netwerk-art.be

T. +32 476 23 54 94

Location: Netwerk, Houtkaai, Aalst, Belgium



A Prior Magazine

J. Kluyskensstraat 6

9000 Gent

Belgium


T. +32 9 267 01 69

els@aprior.org

www.aprior.org

A Prior Magazine is supported by Royal Academy for Fine Arts of the  
University College Ghent (Kask), The Ministry of the Flemish  
Community, the City of Ghent, deBuren and Mondriaan Stichting
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