Emily Jacir
إميلي جاسر
Born: Bethlehem, Palestinian Territories
Domain: Visual Arts
Recognition: GLOBAL
Biography
Emily Jacir (born 1970) is a Palestinian artist and filmmaker whose conceptually rigorous, research-driven practice has made her one of the most internationally honored Palestinian artists of her generation. Born into the Palestinian diaspora, she grew up partly in Saudi Arabia, attended high school in Italy, earned an undergraduate art degree from the University of Dallas, and received her MFA from the Memphis College of Art, before basing herself between New York and Bethlehem. Working across film, photography, installation, performance, video, sound, and writing, Jacir takes as her recurring subjects exile, displacement, movement, and silenced or erased histories, with particular attention to the Palestinian condition. Her art frequently turns the artist's own body and freedom of movement into a medium, exposing the asymmetries of mobility imposed on Palestinians under occupation and in diaspora. Among her most celebrated works is 'Where We Come From' (2001-2003), in which Jacir, using her American passport to cross borders Palestinians cannot, carried out everyday wishes for Palestinians unable to move freely. Her 'Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948' is a refugee tent embroidered with the names of the lost villages, while 'Material for a Film' reconstructs the life of the Palestinian intellectual Wael Zuaiter, assassinated in Rome in 1972. Jacir's international recognition is exceptional. In 2007 she won the Golden Lion for an artist under forty at the 52nd Venice Biennale, and in 2008 she received the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation's Hugo Boss Prize, with its $100,000 award and a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim. She has also received the Prince Claus Award, the Herb Alpert Award, and the Rome Prize, an extraordinary concentration of the art world's highest honors. Beyond her own work, Jacir has been deeply committed to building artistic infrastructure in Palestine, including her involvement in education and the founding of art initiatives in Bethlehem. Combining the highest level of global recognition with a sustained focus on Palestinian history and presence, she is among the most influential contemporary artists to emerge from Palestine.
Why This Person Matters
Winner of both the Venice Golden Lion and the Hugo Boss Prize, Jacir is the most decorated Palestinian artist of her generation, turning displacement and erased history into conceptual art of global stature.