Pace/MacGill Gallery presents until June 30 Fazal Sheikh: Independence | Nakba. The featured works comprise the third project in the artist’s multi-volume set of photographs, The Erasure Trilogy, which explores the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Since his first visit to Israel and the West Bank at the invitation of Frédéric Brenner for ” This Place” initiative in late 2010, Sheikh has addressed the legacies of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 in a series of photographic projects, collectively called The Erasure Trilogy, which seek to render visible the enduring effects of this pivotal historical event. Independence | Nakba is the trilogy’s ultimate body of work, presenting 65 diptychs – one for each year between 1948 and 2013 – that juxtaposed black-and-white portraits of individuals of gradually increasing age from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The visual dichotomy of the portraits speaks of the politics of separation inextricably tied to the Arab-Israeli War, which resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel, the reconfiguration of the region’s territorial borders, and the displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians. Celebrated annually as Independence Day by Israelis, the event is commemorated by Palestinians as the Nakba or day of catastrophe.
The pairing of these stark portraits creates a poignantly human timeline of the inescapable history that simultaneously divides and binds the Israeli and Palestinian populations. As Eduardo Cadava writes of Independence | Nakba, “…the portraits invite us to register the enduring bonds that tie the past, the present, and the future together: a past that preceded the division between Independence and the Nakba, a present that still remains haunted and defined by this division, and a possible future that, taking its point of departure from these bonds, could enable a different and more forgiving tomorrow.”
EXHIBITION
Independence | Nakba
Fazal Sheikh
From April 21 to June 30, 2016
Pace/MacGill Gallery
32 East 57th Street, 9th Floor
New York 10022
United States
http://pacemacgill.com
