Akram Al Halabi

Qalandiya International (Qi) was founded in 2012 as a joint contemporary art event that takes place every two years across Historic Palestine including Jerusalem, Gaza, Haifa, Ramallah, Birzeit, Bethlehem, Lydda, Qalandiya village, Kalandia Refugee Camp, and Al Jib village with international collateral events in Amman, Majdal Shams, Swansea, London, Cape Town, Doha, New York, San Francisco, Olympia, Oakland, and Dusseldorf.

Past editions have held the themes The Sea is Mine, 2016, Archives Lived and Shared, 2014, and Art & Life in Palestine, 2012.

Jack Persekian

Qalandiya International

Jan Lemitz

Qi aims to place Palestine on the world’s cultural map by producing a series of exhibitions, as well as performances, talks, film screenings, workshops and tours, that open up channels for dialogue and exchange, both locally and internationally. As a partnership between art and culture organizations, Qi works collectively to join forces to unify a fragmented geography.

The Fourth Line / Photo by Atef Safadi

Nardeen Srouji

Adam-Jon Williams and Rose Gelderblom Waddilove

Collaborative in nature and ambitious in scale, QI is an attempt to join forces and resources and form links across a fragmented geography – an innovative response to the need to find solutions that work for the collective rather than the individual institutions. In the broader perspective, besides generating opportunities for artists in the region and from elsewhere, QI also aims to engage the local public in programs not straitjacketed by realpolitik and allow them to look at art in a more imaginative and open manner.

Rheim Alkhadi

Mo’in Al Susi

Nida Sinnokrot

Why Qalandiya?

The name ‘Qalandiya’ is associated with the main checkpoint operated by the Israeli military, disconnecting West Bank cities and communities from Jerusalem and beyond.

Victoria Thong Jiahui

Tarek Al Goussei

Yazan Khalili

The setting of daily subjugation and humiliation, it represents the oppressive grip of the occupation. Yet ‘Qalandiya’ has other connotations that have been blurred or erased. It recalls the closed and abandoned Jerusalem airport; it is also the site of the Qalandiya refugee camp, and the village of Qalandiya now divided by the separation wall. A meeting place of contradictions, it is now a place, and symbol, of disconnection, isolation, segregation and fragmentation. Qalandiya International reclaims the name in a defiant and positive celebration of visual arts and culture across a fragmented and divided Palestine and its diaspora.

[via www.qalandiyainternational.org]

Solidarity / Qalandiya International IV
October 3–30, 2018 / various cities
For more information please visit Qalandiya International >