November 9: Art exhibit: Three Cities Against the Wall

(Seth Tobocman's Portraits of Israelis and Palestinians for my Parents)
Three Cities Against the Wall
Ramallah, Tel Aviv, New York

Artists from three separate but vitally interconnected communities will participate for the first time in a one-of-a-kind art show that opens Nov. 9, 2005, in Ramallah, Palestine; Tel Aviv, Israel; and New York City. Three Cities Against the Wall brings together 56 painters, sculptors, filmmakers, and graphic artists united in opposition to the "Separation Wall" that Israel is constructing in the Occupied Territories of Palestine.
Participating artists, many of them internationally recognized, have contributed a wide range of works that movingly convey the conditions imposed by the Wall and the emotions and visceral responses it provokes. Some participants, Palestinian and Israeli, live daily with the conditions imposed by the Wall. Others have traveled extensively in Israel and occupied Palestine, absorbing the reality of the Wall and its disastrous impact on hundreds of thousands of Palestinians' lives.
Three Cities Against the Wall also represents a hopeful development for the future of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples. Each artist has contributed three works to the show, one to be displayed in each city. In the two years they have been planning the exhibition, the artists and activists involved have built networks and created relationships that will sustain a long-term cultural network that opposes Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people.

In New York, Three Cities Against the Wall is organized through ABC No Rio, a community center for the arts on the Lower East Side, by a committee of artists and activists. In Ramallah, Tayseer Barakat, founder of the League of Palestinian Artists and curator of the Gallery Barakat, and Suliman Mansour, director of the Wasiti Art Center in Jerusalem, are organizing the exhibition. And in Tel Aviv, the project is organized by a group of artists and activists associated with the Israeli Coalition Against the Wall, Ta'ayush, and Anarchists Against the Wall.
Three Cities Against the Wall will run for one month in all three locations.

Who is participating?
Fifty-six Palestinian, Israeli, and North American artists, united in their opposition to Israel's "Separation Wall." Internationally known artists who will be participating in the show include, from the U.S., painters Nancy Spero and the late Leon Golub and cartoonist Seth Tobocman; from Palestine, the painter-sculptors Tayseer Barakat and Suliman Mansour; and from Israel, video artist Galit Eilat, director of the Israeli Center for Digital Art, and the late cartoonist Dudu Geva. Each artist will be represented by work in all three locations.

In Ramallah, at Gallery Barakat; in Tel Aviv, at a location to be announced shortly; and in New York, at the art center ABC No Rio.
What kind of works will be featured?
Works will include paintings, carvings and sculpture, film, video installations, graphic works on paper, and photography.