SARA EL-JAZARA
Sara El-Jazara is an art historian, researcher, and archivist whose practice explores the intersections of art, memory, and resistance in the Arab world. Her work engages with the politics of the archive, tracing fragmented histories and artistic practices as acts of preservation and collective reclamation.
A graduate of Marist College in Florence, Italy, El-Jazara’s professional experience spans research, archiving, editing, curation, gallery management, and art consultancy.
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Art Week @ King's AcademyTalk
ART WEEK @ KING’S ACADEMY
TEACHINGAs part of King’s Academy’s Art Week in the Fall of 2022, I gave students a crash course on Arab art history and archival practices.
This workshop gave students a brief survey of art produced in
North Africa and West Asia from the 19th century till contemporary
times. It focused on analyzing the historical context that
produced the artworks, alongside visual aspects of the artwork to
give students a deeper understanding of the artistic climate in the
region.
As a group, we focused on various social, historical and political
occurrences of different time periods and trace how these notions
in(form) the artistic output of the time. Beginning from the mid
1800s, with the emergence of Western orientalist tendencies, tracing the end of the Ottoman empire and the beginning of colonial rule in the region in the 1920s, the emergence and shaping of various nationalist movements in the region and the occupation of Palestine, and unpacking the various conflicts in the region such as the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s and the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s.
Fundamental to the research are the modes of access we have to the
material. Where do we find our information, how do we reach it? What language is it in? Is it readily available and easily accessible? The lack of a consolidated and easily accessible archive allows us to rethink the archive and its purpose. It perhaps changes the way we see and define the archive.