The Jerusalem Fund Gallery Al Quds (Sep 6 - Oct 18, 2013) “The Map Is Not The Territory,” A Five-Year Traveling Art Exhibition

The tittle “The Map is Not the Territory” was coined by philosopher/scientist Alfred Korzybski. 39 contemporary artists from Europe, the United States and Canada – most of them Palestinian, Native American, and Irish – explore the profound specific and unusual intersections between the three cultures with 64 original paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, artist books, and films. They consider such topics as conflict, resistance, land, food, diaspora, identity, and persistence.

The opening reception will feature live music by Palestinian musician Fuad Foty, Irish fiddler Michael Winch, and Native American singer Dawn Avery on rattles and drums. All are live in the D.C. area.

Participants include emerging, as well as internationally renowned artists:

• Jaune Quick-to-See Smith – member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation of Montana. Her work is in collections at the Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Walker, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Museum of Modern Art, New York;

House and Home ©Jaune Quick-to-See Smith / Courtesy of the Artist

• Rita Duffy – one of Ireland’s leading artists, whose work has appeared in London’s Tate Modern and other major museums;

• Hani Zurob – Paris-based Palestinian painter from Gaza, winner of the Renoir prize in Paris and listed as one of The Huffington Post’s "10 international artists to watch in 2013;"

Flying Lesson #4 © Hani Zurob / Courtesy of the Artist

• Nadema Agard (Winyan Luta/Red Woman) an artist, illustrator, curator, educator, lecturer, storyteller, writer, poet, published author, museum professional, and consultant in Repatriation and Multicultural/Native American arts and cultures. A New York City-born Cherokee/Lakota/Powhatan, she is currently the Director of New York’s RED EARTH STUDIO CONSULTING /PRODUCTIONS, where she advocates for contemporary Native arts and cultures as a former consultant and NGO to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Washington, D.C. area artists include:

• Helen Zughaib – who served as United States Cultural Envoy to the West Bank in 2008. Zughaib has exhibited widely across the U.S., Europe, and the Washington D.C. area. Her paintings are included in many private and public collections, including the White House, World Bank, Library of Congress, United States Consulate General, Vancouver, Canada, American Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, and the Arab American National Museum in Detroit, Michigan. Upcoming exhibitions include Anya and Andrew Shiva Art Gallery in NYC; Watergate Gallery, Washington, DC; Protea Gallery, San Diego, California; Arab American National Museum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam;

Woven in Exile © Helen Zughaib / Courtesy of the Artist

• Phoebe Farris –a member of the Powhatan-Renape Nation with expertise on contemporary Native American art and culture, Dr. Farris has consulted for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian Art. Exhibiting in the United States and abroad, Farris was the curator and a participating artist in the five-year traveling exhibition, "Visual Power: 21st Century Native American Artists/Intellectuals," sponsored by the Cultural Programs Division of the United States Department of State;

• Mona El-Bayoumi – who has exhibited in the United States, Europe, South Africa and the Middle East, most recently at Galerie Europia in Paris, with upcoming exhibitions in Washington, D.C. and Picasso Gallery in Cairo, Egypt;

• photographers Michael Keating whose work has been featured in magazines and exhibitions internationally, and Elena Farsakh, exhibited in New York, Boston, Washington, D.C. and Ramallah;

• mixed-media artist Manal Deeb – who whose recent exhibitions include the United Nations, George Mason University and the ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL.

Curators of "The Map is Not the Territory"

Jennifer Heath

Jennifer Heath founded Baksun Books & Arts in 1992 as a small press and independent curatorial project, dedicated to de-commodifying the word and to creating visual arts exhibitions that address issues of social and environmental justice. Baksun’s traveling exhibitions include, among others, Black Velvet: The Art We Love to Hate; The Veil: Visible & Invisible Spaces, and Water, Water Everywhere: Paean to a Vanishing Resource.

Heath is the author/editor of eleven books, including SuperColón: Admiral of the Ocean Sea (illustrated by Kristine Smock); On the Edge of Dream: The Women of Celtic Myth and Legend (Penguin, 1998), The Scimitar and the Veil: Extraordinary Women of Islam (Paulist Press, 2004), The Veil: Women Writers on its History, Lore, and Politics (University of California Press, 2008), Land of the Unconquerable: The Contemporary Lives of Afghan Women (with Ashraf Zahedi, University of California Press, 2011), Children of Afghanistan: The Path to Peace (with Ashraf Zahedi, University of Texas Press, forthcoming), and El Repelente (Or the Anti-Nuke Antics of Anabela). She is currently at work on two environmental and human rights photo exhibitions and a new book about some of the consequences of occupation. She recently completed The Jewel and the Ember: Love Stories of the Ancient Middle East.

Dagmar Painter

Dagmar Painter is the founder and curator of The Jerusalem Fund Gallery Al Quds, the cultural program of The Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development, which is Washington D.C.’s only full-time art gallery featuring the work of contemporary artists whose art centers on issues of the Arab and Islamic worlds, with a special emphasis on Palestinian art. She has lived and worked in the Arab world for more than 12 years and has traveled extensively in the Islamic world for more than 30.

In Washington, she previously established and ran the art gallery of the Embassy of Tunisia. She also directed Gallery Patina, a non-profit gallery of the National Council on Aging, which was featured on NBC’s Today Show. In 2012, she was chosen as an Advisory Review Panelist for the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities Grants Panel, and will be a nominator in the Smithsonian Institution’s SARF program this year. For her work in establishing art spaces and cultural programming in Cairo, Egypt, she received a Meritorious Honor Award from the U.S. Department of State.

She has written and lectured extensively in the United States and abroad on cross-cultural and arts issues, at such venues as the Textile Museum in Washington D.C., and Meridian House International. She also taught seminars on Middle Eastern textiles at the University of Tunis and the Centre D’Etudes Maghrebines, as well as classes at the National Museums of Lagos, Nigeria and Bangkok, Thailand. Selected publications include Arts in the Islamic World, Ornament, Cairo Today, Focus on Pakistan, The Herald, India Today, Arts in Embassies, A Practical Guide to Cairo and Savior: Tunis.