The article explores the informal interplay between local artistic trends and foreign artistic en... more The article explores the informal interplay between local artistic trends and foreign artistic entrepreneurship in early twentieth-century Palestine by investigating the relationship between the artworks of Nicola Saig, a renowned Christian Palestinian icon painter, and the American Colony Photo Department (ACPD). The ACPD operated as a commercial enterprise of the American Colony, a Swedish-American Christian sect in Jerusalem which dominated the commercial production of allegorical biblical scenes. Saig frequently copied the Colony’s hand-colored photographic export items for his first experiments with oil on canvas painting. Moving away from the qudsi (“Jerusalemite”) style of icon painting through the Evangelical aesthetics of the ACPD’s photographs, Saig’s paintings disclose the transformations in artistic practice engendered by the rapidly changing communal and political fabric of late Ottoman Palestine. Despite a lack of written evidence linking Saig and the ACPD, their artistic dialogue provokes an examination of how the process of copying from photographs (and not just the technology of photography) was, in itself foundational to Saig’s transition from icon to genre painter and is a potent index of Palestine’s developing art world of the early twentieth century.
In her video A Sketch of Manners (Alfred Roch's Last Masquerade) (2013), artist Jumana Manna rean... more In her video A Sketch of Manners (Alfred Roch's Last Masquerade) (2013), artist Jumana Manna reanimated a striking group portrait from 1924 as tableau vivant, bringing the original photograph of wealthy Palestinians dressed in Pierrot clown costumes to life as a theatrical narrative. In this article, the author explores how Manna's work repeats and augments particular Orientalist uses of time, inspired by the Orientalist practice of cultural cross-dressing apparent in the photograph. She uses Manna's artistic intervention as an occasion to explore the history of the Christian Palestinian community under the British Mandate in more depth. Echoing theorist Ariella Azoulay’s call to stop ‘looking’ at photographs and start ‘watching’ them instead, Manna's video reveals the archival photograph as more than just proof of flourishing Palestinian urban life before the formation of Israel. As the author argues, it exposes the image as a potent sign of the continuing consequences of Palestine's colonial experience.
thresholds 44: Workspace mines how the meanings of and locations for work have been historically ... more thresholds 44: Workspace mines how the meanings of and locations for work have been historically and culturally defined, how work transposes earlier
notions of labor and craft production, and how the work of artists, writers, architects, designers, and urban planners – alongside managers, psychologists, political leaders, and employees themselves – have been integral in construing the physical and mental conditions of work, rest, and play.
Spanning the fields of art and architectural history and practice, urban planning, science, technology, economic history, sociology, medical history, and creative writing, the contributions to thresholds 44: Workspace attend in turn to the individuals, institutions, or objects that activate workspaces in surprising or previously unwritten ways. The contributions depend on acts of spatial revelation or suppression, bringing to light connections between work, worker, and workspace otherwise seen as separate, quiescent, or clandestine.
This essay reviews Laura S. Schor’s book Sophie Halaby in Jerusalem: An Artist’s Life (Syracuse U... more This essay reviews Laura S. Schor’s book Sophie Halaby in Jerusalem: An Artist’s Life (Syracuse University Press, 2019) as the first detailed account of how this “pioneer” of Palestinian art in the twentieth century came to be and the unusual life she lived. The review analyzes Schor’s book in tandem with previously published materials on the artist and presents the questions that remain as to the artist’s enigmatic personality and uniquely personal oil paintings, watercolors, and drawings, which primarily represented the peaceful hills and flowers of Jerusalem, during the tumultuous events of Palestine’s twentieth-century history.
European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine, 1918-1948 Between Contention and Connection, 2020
This open access book investigates the transnationally connected history of Arab Christian commun... more This open access book investigates the transnationally connected history of Arab Christian communities in Palestine during the British Mandate (1918-1948) through the lens of the birth of cultural diplomacy. Relying predominantly on unpublished sources, it examines the relationship between European cultural agendas and local identity formation processes and discusses the social and religious transformations of Arab Christian communities in Palestine via cultural lenses from an entangled perspective.
The 17 chapters reflect diverse research interests, from case studies of individual archives to chapters that question the concept of cultural diplomacy more generally. They illustrate the diversity of scholarship that enables a broad-based view of how cultural diplomacy functioned during the interwar period, but also the ways in which its meanings have changed. The book considers British Mandate Palestine as an internationalised node within a transnational framework to understand how the complexity of cultural interactions and agencies engaged to produce new modes of modernity.
The article explores the informal interplay between local artistic trends and foreign artistic en... more The article explores the informal interplay between local artistic trends and foreign artistic entrepreneurship in early twentieth-century Palestine by investigating the relationship between the artworks of Nicola Saig, a renowned Christian Palestinian icon painter, and the American Colony Photo Department (ACPD). The ACPD operated as a commercial enterprise of the American Colony, a Swedish-American Christian sect in Jerusalem which dominated the commercial production of allegorical biblical scenes. Saig frequently copied the Colony’s hand-colored photographic export items for his first experiments with oil on canvas painting. Moving away from the qudsi (“Jerusalemite”) style of icon painting through the Evangelical aesthetics of the ACPD’s photographs, Saig’s paintings disclose the transformations in artistic practice engendered by the rapidly changing communal and political fabric of late Ottoman Palestine. Despite a lack of written evidence linking Saig and the ACPD, their artistic dialogue provokes an examination of how the process of copying from photographs (and not just the technology of photography) was, in itself foundational to Saig’s transition from icon to genre painter and is a potent index of Palestine’s developing art world of the early twentieth century.
In her video A Sketch of Manners (Alfred Roch's Last Masquerade) (2013), artist Jumana Manna rean... more In her video A Sketch of Manners (Alfred Roch's Last Masquerade) (2013), artist Jumana Manna reanimated a striking group portrait from 1924 as tableau vivant, bringing the original photograph of wealthy Palestinians dressed in Pierrot clown costumes to life as a theatrical narrative. In this article, the author explores how Manna's work repeats and augments particular Orientalist uses of time, inspired by the Orientalist practice of cultural cross-dressing apparent in the photograph. She uses Manna's artistic intervention as an occasion to explore the history of the Christian Palestinian community under the British Mandate in more depth. Echoing theorist Ariella Azoulay’s call to stop ‘looking’ at photographs and start ‘watching’ them instead, Manna's video reveals the archival photograph as more than just proof of flourishing Palestinian urban life before the formation of Israel. As the author argues, it exposes the image as a potent sign of the continuing consequences of Palestine's colonial experience.
thresholds 44: Workspace mines how the meanings of and locations for work have been historically ... more thresholds 44: Workspace mines how the meanings of and locations for work have been historically and culturally defined, how work transposes earlier
notions of labor and craft production, and how the work of artists, writers, architects, designers, and urban planners – alongside managers, psychologists, political leaders, and employees themselves – have been integral in construing the physical and mental conditions of work, rest, and play.
Spanning the fields of art and architectural history and practice, urban planning, science, technology, economic history, sociology, medical history, and creative writing, the contributions to thresholds 44: Workspace attend in turn to the individuals, institutions, or objects that activate workspaces in surprising or previously unwritten ways. The contributions depend on acts of spatial revelation or suppression, bringing to light connections between work, worker, and workspace otherwise seen as separate, quiescent, or clandestine.
This essay reviews Laura S. Schor’s book Sophie Halaby in Jerusalem: An Artist’s Life (Syracuse U... more This essay reviews Laura S. Schor’s book Sophie Halaby in Jerusalem: An Artist’s Life (Syracuse University Press, 2019) as the first detailed account of how this “pioneer” of Palestinian art in the twentieth century came to be and the unusual life she lived. The review analyzes Schor’s book in tandem with previously published materials on the artist and presents the questions that remain as to the artist’s enigmatic personality and uniquely personal oil paintings, watercolors, and drawings, which primarily represented the peaceful hills and flowers of Jerusalem, during the tumultuous events of Palestine’s twentieth-century history.
European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine, 1918-1948 Between Contention and Connection, 2020
This open access book investigates the transnationally connected history of Arab Christian commun... more This open access book investigates the transnationally connected history of Arab Christian communities in Palestine during the British Mandate (1918-1948) through the lens of the birth of cultural diplomacy. Relying predominantly on unpublished sources, it examines the relationship between European cultural agendas and local identity formation processes and discusses the social and religious transformations of Arab Christian communities in Palestine via cultural lenses from an entangled perspective.
The 17 chapters reflect diverse research interests, from case studies of individual archives to chapters that question the concept of cultural diplomacy more generally. They illustrate the diversity of scholarship that enables a broad-based view of how cultural diplomacy functioned during the interwar period, but also the ways in which its meanings have changed. The book considers British Mandate Palestine as an internationalised node within a transnational framework to understand how the complexity of cultural interactions and agencies engaged to produce new modes of modernity.
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Papers by Nisa Ari
notions of labor and craft production, and how the work of artists, writers, architects, designers, and urban planners – alongside managers, psychologists, political leaders, and employees themselves – have been integral in construing the physical and mental conditions of work, rest, and play.
Spanning the fields of art and architectural history and practice, urban planning, science, technology, economic history, sociology, medical history, and creative writing, the contributions to thresholds 44: Workspace attend in turn to the individuals, institutions, or objects that activate workspaces in surprising or previously unwritten ways. The contributions depend on acts of spatial revelation or suppression, bringing to light connections between work, worker, and workspace otherwise seen as separate, quiescent, or clandestine.
Book Reviews by Nisa Ari
Books by Nisa Ari
The 17 chapters reflect diverse research interests, from case studies of individual archives to chapters that question the concept of cultural diplomacy more generally. They illustrate the diversity of scholarship that enables a broad-based view of how cultural diplomacy functioned during the interwar period, but also the ways in which its meanings have changed. The book considers British Mandate Palestine as an internationalised node within a transnational framework to understand how the complexity of cultural interactions and agencies engaged to produce new modes of modernity.
notions of labor and craft production, and how the work of artists, writers, architects, designers, and urban planners – alongside managers, psychologists, political leaders, and employees themselves – have been integral in construing the physical and mental conditions of work, rest, and play.
Spanning the fields of art and architectural history and practice, urban planning, science, technology, economic history, sociology, medical history, and creative writing, the contributions to thresholds 44: Workspace attend in turn to the individuals, institutions, or objects that activate workspaces in surprising or previously unwritten ways. The contributions depend on acts of spatial revelation or suppression, bringing to light connections between work, worker, and workspace otherwise seen as separate, quiescent, or clandestine.
The 17 chapters reflect diverse research interests, from case studies of individual archives to chapters that question the concept of cultural diplomacy more generally. They illustrate the diversity of scholarship that enables a broad-based view of how cultural diplomacy functioned during the interwar period, but also the ways in which its meanings have changed. The book considers British Mandate Palestine as an internationalised node within a transnational framework to understand how the complexity of cultural interactions and agencies engaged to produce new modes of modernity.