Return of the Soul: The Nakbah Project
by Jane Frere
The Nakbah
Project Unfolds
Wax Figures Made by Palestinians: The Journey Begins
In order to engage the local community in her endeavour -
The Nakbah Project - and to involve its members in the creation
of wax figurines, a series of workshops were held that introduced
their participants to the concept behind the artist’s
work, her inspiration and her journey as well as to human
anatomy, with a special emphasis on proportion and expression.
A selection of artistic studies and physical exercises were
also conducted, and particular attention was paid to Palestinian
period costume from 1930 to the 1940s so as to ultimately
give the resulting wax figures an essence of authenticity.
Once the essential preparatory skills had been developed and
background knowledge acquired, each participant made their
own wire and tissue skeleton, which was then cast in wax.
The artist started off by giving a basic workshop to a team
of professional artists and art students in Ramallah who
subsequently trained youths from the ages of 14 to 18 in the
al Amari
(Ramallah) and Kalandia (Jerusalem) refugee camps.
Using the same method, she then conducted workshops at the
Al-Doha Children’s Cultural Center in Bethlehem and
The Palestinian Art Court - al Hoash in Jerusalem.
Special importance was given to extending the work in the
camps to neighbouring countries to ensure that the dispersed
people of 1948 Palestine were fully represented.
In Jordan, the project’s partners are
al Balad Theatre
and The Khalid Shoman Foundation - Darat al Funun. al Balad
Theatre, a key contributor to the development of this undertaking,
ran the project with the Community Development Committee (CDC)
of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the
Zarqa refugee camp. Darat al Funun has generously supported
and sponsored the project and will be hosting an exhibition
of it from October 2008 to January 2009.
Having established partners in Lebanon, the project’s
associate producers The Cultural Association SHAMS and AL-JANA
/ The Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts, it was decided
that another collection of 3,000 figures would be created,
offering the possibility for two exhibits to tour globally
at the same time.
The Breath of Life: The Testimonies
A strong emphasis was also placed on individual narratives
of the experience of displacement in The Nakbah Project. Through
the project, youngsters were given the chance to directly
engage with the fading memory of an older generation, the
generation that lived through the traumatic events of 1948.
In fact, a central part of the process of creating the wax
figurines was the collecting of the identities of the real-life
refugees these figures would go on to represent. These identities
were gathered by the younger generation through interviews
with actual witnesses of An Nakbah. Youths whose families had
been displaced were asked to interview their relatives about
their experience of leaving their hometowns. All of the questions
that were posed in the interviews that were carried out were
related to the moment of flight and to the first day and night
of being a refugee. Witnesses were asked to describe the clothes
that they may have been wearing at the time of their departure,
about whether or not they had heard of a neighbouring massacre
and how that may have affected their decision to leave, what
possessions they were able to take with them, and where they
spent their first night away from home. The answers given
by each interviewee were then used to give character and life
to a wax figure that corresponded to them.
In addition to interviews, testimonial papers were collected
from scores of refugees from across the region. These papers
have been integrated into the final art product in the form
an installation of suspended strips of handwritten testimonies,
exhibited alongside the sculpture of wax figures.
Nearly all the wax figures of The Nakbah Project, as such,
have a name, a place of origin on the pre 1948 map of Palestine
and, in some cases, a story recorded on paper.
In addition, the artist filmed a number of short interviews
with An Nakbah witnesses. On occasion, the grandchild or younger
relative of the interviewee who was involved in The Nakbah
Project was present during filming.
Audio clips from these interviews have been used to form
a sound installation of layered voices that accompanies the
suspended wax figures and written accounts. This sound sculpture
aurally conveys the identities, the roots, and the recollections
of the displaced of their sudden dislocation and of their
home that once was –individual oral histories which,
combined, form the collective history of the Palestinian people.
The spoken and written testimonies of The Nakbah Project thus
give voice to a silenced memory.
The
Return
Combined, the suspended figures, written testimonies, and
audio clips make up the artistic product of Jane Frere’s
journey titled Return of the Soul. In the end, the wax figures
of the project and their stories - the souls that they represent
- will return to Palestine. The displaced Palestinians whose
memories these figures tell of will symbolically come home
in a bold move that defies, at once, man-made boundaries and
barriers and inhumane policies and restrictions.
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