Centre of Life
2018
Chalk on blackboard, dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist
This project looks at systematic violence and how it operates through the structures of everyday life. It does so by questioning the notion of Jerusalem as a “centre of life” and by looking into the legality of “belonging” to the city. It explores Jerusalem not as a place but as legal processes and paperwork. It asks how the city manoeuvres through legal procedures, and what the life decisions are that one must make in order to ensure access to and one’s ability to live in the city. Considering Jerusalem as a centre of life raises questions about what a city means in a time of apartheid and destruction. What becomes evidence to be marshalled in order to prove one’s right to the city? This project probes the materiality of life: documents, bills, taxes, where the needle is put, the smell of coffee in the morning, where the car is parked, whether you have a TV, and to whom you are married.
Artist’s Bio:
Lives and works in and out of Palestine. His works have been exhibited in several major exhibitions, including, among others: New Photography, MoMA 2018; Jerusalem Lives, Palestinian Museum, 2017; and the Shanghai Biennial, 2016. Yazan Khalili’s practice frames landscapes, institutions, and social and technological phenomena as politicised entities. His background in architecture allows him to look at landscape in a critical manner, deconstructing the colonial visual discourse around the Palestinian landscape. His practice engages with the settler-colonial question, whether in Palestine or elsewhere.