Our Concept
At the turn of the 20th century, the Hejaz, a narrow-gauge railway built south from Damascus to transport pilgrims to Mecca during the Hajj, represented a tangible, if utopic, dream of a united region during Ottoman rule. Part divine aspiration, part vehicle for political gain, the train was designed to extend existing railways from Istanbul through present-day Turkey to Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Saudi Arabia and, finally, to the holiest cities of Islam. A decade later, the British, eager to replace the Ottoman Empire with its own, initiated what would become decades of European battles in the region. The dream was finally obliterated: Lawrence of Arabia and a Bedouin army repeatedly blew the railway apart during WWI. It never recovered but the tracks still remain.
We Have Woven the Motherlands with Nets of Iron investigates what is left of the withered dream to transcend physical and metaphysical borders after the rise and fall of empires. Having endured wars and conquests, the trains persist, limping along, rented out to nostalgic tourists and enthusiasts. Trains, like Arab unity itself, have a romantic geography: nearly obsolete, valued for historical symbolism, begging to be updated or made once again relevant. In contrast, various countries in the region are initiating modern railway systems that can reconnect citizens to the landscape.
In examining dichotomies between history and current nationalisms, the exhibition We Have Woven the Motherlands with Nets of Iron will make use of contributions from artists and historians from each of the five countries of the Hejaz (from Jordan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Syria) to produce performances on movable platforms, archival projects using remnants of the rail lines and other installations, all of which will take place on the rails in Jordan.
The exhibition is part of Apexart’s Franchise project for 2011, and will run from the 4th of May until the 4thth of June 2011. The exhibition is curated by Eric Gottesman and Toleen Touq.
Photo of the train wreck in the Nefud Desert of Saudi Arabia by Jerry Miller, 70images.com
We met at Asli’s lovely studio just after she returned from performances in Paris and Cambridge. She showed us various artist books she made including one in which she described to a professional thesis writer what she wanted her thesis to be about and waited for a production; another in which she resurrected words banned during the early days of the Turkish republic and made them into a rap song; and another made as a document of a performance of a travel book written by a British traveler in South America that was important to her as a child. She showed us other works that she is producing now for a solo show next year. The one that has stuck with Toleen and I the most is a set of 4 paintings based on the first Turkish film, of a possibly imaginary explosion of an Ottoman building by the republic that was supposedly shot by an amateur Turkish filmmaker. These have a lot of angles that fit with our project.
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