Call For Essays: The Map Is Not The Territory – Parallel Paths-Palestinians, Native Americans, Irish

Call for Essays
THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY
PARALLEL PATHS-PALESTINIANS, NATIVE AMERICANS, IRISH

Seeking essays for a scholarly catalogue describing a unique art exhibition that explores the relationships and commonalties in Palestinian, Native American, and Irish experiences of invasion, occupation, and colonization – not as novelty or polemic, but as history and current events. Although many peoples worldwide have suffered long and often brutal intrusions, Palestinians, Native Americans, and the Irish have intersected for centuries in specific and often unusual ways. The exhibition examines some of these intersections and asks how contemporary artists examine and process them through their own lives and visions.

Essays are requested from Irish, Palestinian and Native American points of view that consider these relationships in the context of topics such as land, diaspora, conflict, resistance, walls, identity, culture, and persistence. By Native American, we mean indigenous peoples of North and South America. By Irish and Palestinian, we include the diaspora.

Deadline for 500-word abstracts with a 300-word bio is October 25, 2014.

If accepted, completed 2500-word essays will be due January 5, 2015.

THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY is a traveling exhibition conceived by Jennifer Heath and co-curated with Dagmar Painter of The Jerusalem Fund/Palestine Center Gallery in Washington, D.C., where it opened in September 2013. It was recently shown at the Levantine Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY is comprised of works on paper (and two media pieces) by thirty-nine artists. Most are of Palestinian, Native American/First Nations, and Irish origin. They include leading artists, with international reputations, such as Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Malaquias Montoya, Hani Zurob and Rita Duffy. They address topics such as land, diaspora, conflict, resistance, walls, identity, culture, and persistence. Eight brief wall texts provide the threads to each culture’s struggles for human and civil rights.

The exhibition has been reviewed in Cultural Survival, the Washington Post and other prestigious periodicals. Selected information can be found on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/TheMapIsNotTheTerritory?ref=bookmarks

There is no need for essayists to have seen the exhibition, although further information, such as wall texts and images are available on request.

Please contact Jennifer Heath at baksunarts@aol.com for further information and to submit abstracts.