Can Rocks Feel Pain? The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine.

photographs by Margaret Olin and texts by David Shulman

Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University

On view January 13, 2020 to June 26, 2020 [closed March 13 due to Covid19]

These harsh desert landscapes are home to a small population of farmers and herdsmen, whose way of life is threatened with extinction. We want to show those who have not entered this world what it is like to live its reality. To make palpable the experience of being transformed from a mere outsider to someone who, simply by being with these people, is implicated in their fate.

We aim to bring the visitor into the spaces of the South Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley, where in our experience it is not possible to remain indifferent. We ourselves have for years been deeply engaged with that reality, with the Palestinians and with their oppressors: Israeli soldiers, settlers, policemen. Our photographs and texts converse with all of the above.

More information about the exhibition at the Whitney Humanities Center here; detailed description of the content of the exhibition here: press: here

Exhibition: Gone Like a Sip of Water

PHOTOGRAPHS IN DHEISHEH REFUGEE CAMP, 2014-2019

Sarah Smith Gallery, Yale Divinity School, March 30 – June 25, postponed

The title of this exhibition, Gone Like a Sip of Water, is from an Arabic expression meaning “He died a sudden or pointless death.” Like many of the texts in this exhibition, these words were spoken to me by Om Tha’er, a bereaved 78-year-old grandmother who remembers being expelled as a child from Khuldeh, a destroyed Palestinian village in central Israel. She now lives in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp near Bethlehem.

You may find a description of the exhibition here

Marking Time: Dheisheh Refugee Camp

Palestine Museum, Woodbridge CT, April, 2018 – September, 2019

The Dheisheh Refugee Camp has existed on the edge of Bethlehem since 1949, at first as rows of tents, now as a crowded city neighborhood, still under the auspices of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Children there grow up in a streetscape that is a living discourse in murals. Most of them are of martyrs, and most of them are from Dheisheh itself. These photographs examine the subtleties of this discourse and its place in the lives of the inhabitants of the camp, particularly the children.

More information about the exhibition here

and about the Palestine Museum US here