In 1948, Israel was founded in Historic Palestine, and Palestinian Nakba (Palestinian exile) happened. It caused numerous jews have moved to Israel, and Palestinian have left their hometown and have been enforced to separate from their family and motherland. Up till today, historic Palestine has experienced the various wars and conflicts because of the identities and unfair. 

Between the territory of Palestinian west bank and State of Israel, there is a separation wall, which divides the homeland, family and identity of Palestinian. Since 2012, Qalandiya International  Biennale has held the art festival to transcend boundaries and transform the Qalandiya checkpoint to be a bridge to connect both sides of the separation wall and the world.

This essay aims to discuss how Qalandiya International  Biennale can cross the border and the limitations of the art festival caused by the political situation between Palestine/Israel.

Examples of Palestinian art
Sliman Mansour(1947- )
And the Convoy Keeps Going
https://www.dw.com/en/palestinian-artist-sliman-mansour-will-not-leave-israel-despite-not-feeling-free/a-43782048
ناجي سليم العلي, Naji al-ali
حنظلة
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9F%93%E9%81%94%E6%8B%89#/media/File:Gazagraffiti.jpg、http://www.palestinemonitor.org/list.php?tag=cpjm5wa1788yc5rb5w98o

Palestinian art focuses on the social and political aspects, and it is similar to the characteristics of contemporary art.

 

Luisa Gandolfo (2015) (Re)constructing Utopia, Third Text, 29:3, 184-194

https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935307.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935307-e-13

Hence,
1. does the mobility and sociality of art come true in reality under the complicated political situation?

2. does Qanlandiya International cross the border in society and between participants/Palestinians?
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Consequently, Qalandiaya International may be restricted by politics.

Ref

Despite the situations of limitations, art still pursuits Utopia to improve the influences and better future.

 

Qi aims to place Palestine on the world’s cultural map by producing a series of exhibitions, as well as performances, talks, film screenings, workshops and tours, that open up channels for dialogue and exchange, both locally and internationally. As a partnership between art and culture organizations, Qi works collectively to join forces to unify a fragmented geography.

Collaborative in nature and ambitious in scale, QI is an attempt to join forces and resources and form links across a fragmented geography – an innovative response to the need to find solutions that work for the collective rather than the individual institutions. In the broader perspective, besides generating opportunities for artists in the region and from elsewhere, QI also aims to engage the local public in programs not straitjacketed by realpolitik and allow them to look at art in a more imaginative and open manner.

Influenced by

1960s Minimalism and Pop Art

EX: pop art Andy Warhol

-->Conceptualism

Minimalism :Donald Judd

1970s feminist movement

Late 1960s -1970s 

dematerialization of art/ experimental media / abstract form to convey artists’ ideas

Performance Art (Marina Abramović, Yoko Ono, and Joseph Beuys)

1980s 

Advertising to investigate cultural authority and identity politics

Ex: Maya Lin Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Wall in Washington D.C.

Richard Serra/Process Art Movement

2005 

Social practice concerns public practice, socially engaged art, community art, new-genre public art, participatory art, interventionist art, collaborative art, relational art and dialogical aesthetics.

Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London and New York: Verso.

Castells, M. (2009). The power of identity: The information age: economy, society, and culture (vol.2). UK & US：Wiley-Blackwell. (Original edition 1997)

Foucault, M.(1991).Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison.UK: Penguin

Halbwachs, M.(1950). The Collective Memory. NY: Harper & Row Colophon Books.

Helguera, P. (2011). Education for socially engaged art. NY: Jorge Pinto Books.

Michel de Certeau (1984). The practice of everyday life. California: University of California Press.

Nicolaj van der Meulen & Jörg Wiesel(2017). Culinary Turn: Aesthetic Practice of Cookery. Germany: Transcript Verlag.

Olick, Jeffrey K.(2007).The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility. New York: Routledge.

Thompson, N.(2012). Living as Form Socially: Engaged Art from 1991-2011. US: MIT Press.

Kester, G.(2013). Conversation Pieces：Community＋Communication in Modern Art. US: University of California Press.

Lacy, S.(1994). Mapping The Terrain performance and conference. Seattle:Bay Press

Leanne Schubert* and Mel Gray (2015). The death of emancipatory social work as art and birth of socially engaged art practice. British Journal of Social Work (2015) 1–8.

Arnstein, S. R. (1969). A ladder of citizen participation. JAIP. 35(4), 216-224.