The Palestinian-born Emily Jacir studied at the University of Dallas, the Memphis College of Art, and completed the Whitney Independent Study Programme in New York. Her approach consists in combining the roles of archivist, activist, and poet in order to create works that are both personal and profoundly political, such as her raising awareness of the distress of the Palestinian people. She uses film, photography, social intervention, installation, performance, video, and text to evoke repressed historical accounts, political resistance, and geopolitical division. In her video called Retracing Bus No. 23 on the Historic Jerusalem-Hebron Road (2006), she compares the West Bank territory of the 1960s with the current territory, isolated by the separation wall inside the West Bank. Her work also explores archives, as seen in Where We Come From (2003), documenting the wishes of Palestinians – whose return to the homeland was denied – such as "playing football with a boy in Haïfa," "watering a tree in their village". With the help of her American passport allowing her to travel to Palestine freely, she carried out all of these activities in their place. In 2007, she was awarded the Golden Lion from the 52nd Venice Biennale, in the artists under 40 category, and, in 2008, she received the prestigious Hugo Boss contemporary art prize in New York. Apart from the support she provides to Palestinian education, she teaches at the International Academy of Art, Palestine, in Ramallah where she created the first International Video Festival in 2002.
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