I posted about Hourani's Qalandia piece at the New Museum a couple days ago. Now Robin Creswell has reviewed the exhibit for the Harper's Blog. And he has this to say about the Hourani piece. (Which is called Qalandia 2067 on his website. Maybe it was renamed for this exhibit?)
Here is Creswell:
The eeriest exhibit, which has stayed with me in the days following
my visit, is Wafa Hourani’s Qalandia 2087. The installation is a diorama
built of simple materials, imagining what the Qalandia refugee camp,
situated just west of Jerusalem, will look like one hundred years after
the first Intifada. The camp is an orderly sort of ghetto: one of its
taller buildings is conspicuously aslant, but the roads are straight and
lined with prim little streetlamps. The security wall that cuts through
the real Qalandia has become a wall of mirrors; on the other side of
it — the Israeli side — are a nightclub with a goldfish tank and an
airport with toy jetliners.
“Qalandia 2087, 2009,” a mixed-media installation in six parts by Wafa Hourani, photographed by Wilfried Petzi.
Walking through the space of the mock-up, which is about half the
size of a handball court, you are made to think what it would be like to
live in or visit such a place. And as you approach the mirror-clad
separation barrier, you’re confronted with the image of yourself in two
very different landscapes — as though asked to choose which side you’re
on, or to think about the restrictions such a choice might entail. Like
several other exhibits in the show, Qalandia 2087 suggests the power of
images to limit the imagination, by reflecting back at us the picture of
ourselves we would like to see, or might prefer to see in place of
another, perhaps truer one.
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