Spotlight
Jayce Salloum - Middle East trilogy: history redux
Amicitia, Nieuweweg 1a Leeuwarden
opening times: tue - sun 11.00-18.00h
Middle East trilogy: history redux gives special substance to the constituent elements of representation and, more particularly, to their underlying historical, social and cultural context. The deconstructionist approach allows him, on the one hand, to attempt to define that place from which I relate with the world and, on the other hand, to transgress the structures that limit and shape how we look at the world. Jayce Salloum’s video work exists within and between the very personal, quotidian, local and the trans-national. It engages in an intimate subjectivity and discursive challenge.
Muqaddimah Li-Nihayat Jidal (Introduction to the End of an Argument) Speaking for oneself... / Speaking for others, 41:41 min., Canada, 1990
Made by the Lebanese-Canadian video artist Jayce Salloum and the Palestinian film-maker Elia Suleiman, 'Introduction to the End of an Argument' deals with the distorted picture we have of Arab culture in general and of the Intifada - the Palestinian resistance in Israel's occupied territories - in particular. Salloum and Suleiman have combined and confronted fragments of image and text taken from Hollywood, European and Israeli films, documentaries and news items with material which they have personally recorded on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The recent recognition of the PLO by Israel and the subsequent negotiations make the work seem all the more relevant and topical. Salloum and Suleiman have compiled an incisive argument for the need to think and look beyond our media.
Talaeen a Junuub/ Up to the South, 60 min., Lebanon/USA/Canada, 1993
An oblique, albeit powerful documentary (cooperation with Lebanese Walid Ra’ad), which examines the current conditions, politics and economics of South Lebanon. The work focuses on the social, intellectual and popular resistance to the Israeli occupation, as well as conceptions of 'the land' and culture, and the imperiled identities of the Lebanese people. Simultaneously it’s self-consciously engages in a parallel critique of the documentary genre and its traditions.
This is not Beirut (Kan Ya Ma Kan) There was and there was not Jayce Salloum, 49 min., Lebanon/USA/Canada, 1994
This is a personal essay on the popular misrepresentations of Lebanon and Beirut which documents the filmmaker's own experiences while working in Lebanon. Aware of its own conceptual baggage, the work situates itself between genres in order to better expose commonplace assumptions. The examination is thus liberated to realize the actual complexities of the identities of artist and subject. The result is a critical engagement of the disparities and disjunctions arising on site.
biography
Jayce Salloum (1958 Kelowna, British Columbia), grandson of Lebanese immigrants, has been working in installation, photography, mixed & new media since 1975. Salloum has participated in numerous solo and collective exhibitions in North America, Europe, Japan and Brazil. Many institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Canada and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, count his works among their collections.
