How can artistic and curatorial interventions re-visit subjugated knowledges of the Negev desert? How can they sustain regional cultural diversity and generate embodied, situated modes of engagements with the region’s history of culture?

 

Looking at the distribution of space and resources as the expression of a social milieu based on identity attributes such as race, gender, religion and nationality, this research analyzes the curatorial agendas of the cultural institutions in the Negev through the question of cultural representation of differential identities.

 

Analyzing a series of artistic and curatorial interventions that deal with the politics of land, land-use and public space in the Negev, the research establishes that, although they are situated outside the walls of the exhibition space, historical and contemporary artistic and curatorial interventions in the landscape and the urban public sphere of the Negev, are caught up in the patriarchal Israeli art discourse and in a colonial, nationalist impulse.

 

The research proposes to consider situated and embodied knoweledges of the region that challenge the limits of the Israeli art canon and that, due to a prevailing cosmopolitan and internationalized cultural vantage point on the culture of the region, have not yet been accepted as valuable sources of knowledge and have not yet been integrated into the curatorial agenda of regional cultural institutions.

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