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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UNTITLED, EXIST FESTIVAL EXHIBITION
ATHENS, GREECE
2022
“UNTITLED” (2O22)
installation
Exist Festival, Athens, 2022
Untitled (2020)
Over a year of internet-sleuthing for Arab artworks, essays, and articles left me with more than I can count... but slowly, a narrative emerged. In this installation, Untitled (2020), mimicking a detective’s study, I attempted to piece together a story of Arab art—or perhaps to narrate Arab history through art. I worked by grouping artworks thematically, touching on the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), the Iraq Wars (the Iran-Iraq war from 1980–88, the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and the American invasion in 2003), the Colonial and Mandate eras, the Nakba, and the recurring dream and nightmare of nation-building. When it came to the installation, I arranged the postcard-sized works by their date of creation, so that stories of the past became intertwined with the future.
On the right wall, among contemporary works by artists like Etel Adnan, Ali Cherri, Hayv Kahraman, and Dia Azzawi, is Marwan Rechmaoui’s Monument for the Living (2008)—a two-meter-long concrete replica of Burj El Murr. An abandoned building originally destined for offices, it was ill-fatedly used only as a sniper outpost during the Lebanese Civil War. Nestled in the corner near the right wall, Sarah Risheq’s if_the_archive_could_speak (2022) played on loop, repeating every 3 minutes and 36 seconds.
Moving to the left is a move back through history and time. Here is an image of the now-destroyed floor mosaic at the Al Rasheed Hotel featuring George H.W. Bush’s face and the words “BUSH IS CRIMINAL,” designed by Layla Attar in 1991. Inji Efflatoun’s Prison series calls into question the era of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Abstractions by Samia Halaby, Simone Fattal, and Mohammed Melehi sit alongside Sliman Mansour’s truthful depictions of life under Occupation, the work of the Egyptian Surrealists, and evocations of the Epic of Karbala’ in Kadhim Al Haydar’s The Martyr’s Epic (1965). On the tables, acting as pedestals, are texts I consider “essential,” left open for the viewer to pick up, read, and flip through.