ex libris, 2010-2012
Emily Jacir is an artist and educator active in the Mediterranean region. Her work focuses on themes of transformation, translation, resistance, and the exploration of silenced historical narratives. She uses a wide range of media and methodologies including film, video, photography, sculpture, installation, performance and archival research to investigate personal and collective movement through public space and its implications for the physical and social experience of transmediterranean space and time. For the last twenty years, she has been working in southern Italy, primarily in Salento but also in Basilicata and Sicily. Her most recent work, We Ate the Wind, features a large cinematic installation that combines new and archival material, addressing questions of visibility and invisibility, proximity and distance, hospitality and exclusion, exploring specific migration policies and their consequences on individuals and communities. Drawing on rituals such as dances, processions and games, the artist charts the way space, collectivity and memories are claimed.