Emily Jacir, Visiting Artist Lecture 2025

Artist, filmmaker, writer, and educator Emily Jacir gives a lecture at Skowhegan focusing on key works that were selected by the participants: Memorial to 418 Palestinian villages which were destroyed, depopulated and occupied by Israel in 1948, Nothing Will Happen, From Paris to Riyad (drawings for my mother), We Ate The Wind, Sexy Semite, Letter To A Friend, ex libris, and Pietrapertosa. At the core of all of these works is the notion that history is something that is always unfolding, and Jacir’s work seeks to point towards a future that is inevitable, even if what that future looks like is uncertain. Recuperating materials, finding materials, putting them together, and building the idea of a network is something Jacir is also interested in. She explains this in Memorial.. which was a family sized refugee tent where Jacir stencilled the names of Palestinian villages onto them and then gathered people together in her studio at the PS 1 Clock Tower where everyone sewed the village names together. The people who came were Palestinians who were from these villages and many were also Israeli’s who grew up on the remains of these villages. Another essential key component of Jacir’s work is the importance of gathering a community together that the world has devised so many ways to keep people separated from one another. This is at the heart of the work Jacir does at Dar Jacir which is an art space she runs in Bethlehem, Palestine. The geographical landscape of Dar Jacir being linked to two sides of the mediterranean ocean is also very strong and something Jacir continues to nurture. To be able to gather together, be together, mourn together, and do whatever it is together is important to Jacir. Jacir then speaks about being a part of various dance communities, particularly in the south of Italy, because it is a space where people can gather freely in public space and celebrate rituals together. All of the rituals in Bethlehem and the way that people can publicly gather gets taken away year after year after year, so this is also linked to Jacir’s interest in public space and what one can do in public space. Jacir ends her lecture by talking about the difficulties of making art in this current moment of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Jacir says that things need time to unfold. Right now, Jacir is focusing on nurturing and taking care of Dar Jacir. Jacir wants Dar Jacir to exist as a capsule outside of time–not unlike Skowhegan–where failures and bad exchanges exist, because the repair after a bad exchange is also an amazing thing because it leads to deeper exchanges.

Please note that the full recording of this lecture is not available for research request.