Suchergebnisse

Much of the rhetoric around racism and racialized discrimination in Israel centers on Israeli Jewish treatment of Palestinians. However, an examination of the experience of Mizrahi Jews can also be instructive as to the ways that racism and white supremacy function within Israel—through a privileging of Ashkenazi Jews, whose experiences are used to define the contemporary Israeli Jewish experience. For example, Israeli Jewish artist of Yemeni descent Leor Grady's work addresses the marginalization, erasure, and exile of Yemeni Mizrahi Jews in Israel. In his video work Eye and Heart, Grady highlights how, in its absorption into Israeli folk dance, traditional Yemeni dance has been uprooted from its site of origination and "whitewashed." Through a discussion of this work and others alongside which it was shown in the exhibition Natural Worker, I argue that Grady's articulation of the co-option of Yemeni culture by the dominant Ashkenazi (white) Israeli mainstream demonstrates how racialization plays out in the cultural realm of Israel. This method of privileging whiteness can be seen in the Israeli co-option of other Mizrahi and Palestinian cultural elements, such as couscous, hummus, and Arabic words such as "yalla." This examination of Grady's work allows for an understanding of how this privileging of whiteness functions within the Jewish Israeli context.

My project examines the effect of the inter-Intifada period (1993-2000) on Palestinian art produced by artists living in Palestine and Israel. I argue that political disillusionment resulting from the failed Oslo Accords (1993) and outbreak of the Second Intifada (2000-2005), increased globalization, and the rise of the Internet during this period altered Palestinian mentality regarding the occupation, Palestinian government, and daily life. Moreover, I contend that this shifting mentality is articulated in the art produced in the post-Second Intifada period. My chapters examine three thematics wherein this shift can be seen. The first chapter investigates changing notions of Palestinian time from one of stagnant waiting in the hope of a return to an idealized past to a waiting wherein time gives the illusion of forward motion, while in reality events recur cyclically without any real progress. This is evident in post-Second Intifada Palestinian art in the use of repeated imagery in video and film, the insertion of historic imagery into a contemporary context, and the image of the circle. Chapter 2 examines the presence of humor in post-Second Intifada Palestinian art. While art had previously served to promote Palestinian nationalist ideology, disillusionment with the possibility for peace or progress in the wake of the failed Oslo Accords resulted in the rise of dark humor as a means of artistic critique and expression of frustrations with the realities of daily Palestinian life. The final chapter investigates the expansion of critique among Palestinian artists from one that focuses solely on the occupation, to a self-reflexive critique. This chapter consists of three parts, each of which investigates a different critique: political (the actions of Palestinian leaders and their use or sacrifice of the arts in service of the resistance), religious (the rise and influence of conservative Islam), and gender/sexuality (Arab masculinity and homosexuality). Each of the thematics discussed in my project interacts and overlaps in artists' works to reveal how Palestinian attitudes about their daily lives and the potential for the future have shifted after the failure of Oslo.