Offering Reconciliation

Aliza Olmert (Wife of Israeli Prime Minister) Jew doesn’t expel Arab doesn’t expel Jew doesn’t expel Arab…, 2005 Oil color on ceramic, 17 x 20 x 6 Offering Reconciliation Special Exhibit

Philippe Boulakia (Palestinian artist) Untitled, 2005 Stones on ceramic, 17 x 20 x 6 Offering Reconciliation Special Exhibit

A standout special exhibit at SOFA CHICAGO 2007, Nov. 2 - 4 at Navy Pier, Festival Hall is entitled Offering Reconciliation, which will present ceramic bowls designed by 135 prominent Palestinian and Israeli artists on the theme of reconciliation. The exhibit is presented by the Parent’s Circle Families Forum (PCFF), which consists of several hundreds of bereaved families, half Palestinian and half Israeli, whose members have all lost immediate family members due to the violence in the region; and AIDA: the Association of Israel’s Decorative Arts, which will for the 5 ^th straight year present a curated exhibit of contemporary decorative artwork by artists currently living in Israel. A live auction of bowls in the Offering Reconciliation special exhibit will be held at SOFA CHICAGO on November 3, with pre-bidding on-line beginning in September; all proceeds will support PCFF programs in Israeli and Palestinian communities.

Follow the link below to read a Washington Post article on Offering Reconciliation.

-
Fragile Hopes for Peace, Gathered Up in Bowls
By Rachel Beckman, Washington Post Staff Writer, May 3, 2007

In her introduction to an art exhibition at the World Bank Tuesday, Robi Damelin said she did not come all the way from her home in Tel Aviv to bring “olive branches or doves or bad poetry.”

She did, however, bring 135 ceramic bowls.

Damelin and her group, the Parents Circle-Families Forum, are hosting the exhibition “Offering Reconciliation,” which features artistic interpretations of the Middle East conflict created from the bowls.

Damelin joined the Parents Circle, an organization of Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved ones in the conflict between their people, after a Palestinian sniper killed her son David in 2002. She spoke at the World Bank on Tuesday along with Ali Abu Awwad, a Palestinian man whose brother was killed by an Israeli soldier.

“Offering Reconciliation” debuted last May in Israel and will travel to United Nations headquarters in New York in September. The exhibition is on view at the World Bank because of a donation from former World Bank president James Wolfensohn.

“That’s James Wolfensohn, you’ll note,” Damelin said, a nod to the scandal involving current bank President Paul Wolfowitz. “Wolf-en-sohn.”

Contributors include Israeli furniture designer Ron Arad, Israeli photographer and video artist Michal Rovner and Aliza Olmert, wife of embattled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Only 16 of the 135 artists in the show are Palestinian because of logistical issues with shipping the art, Damelin said.

Damelin lived with the fragile bowls in her house for a year. (Her dog liked to sleep in one of them — she wouldn’t say which.) She said the exhibition has been “a nightmare” to transport and joked that next time, the group will customize postage stamps.

Some of the bowls offer obvious political messages, such as Arik Caspi’s bowl, which was broken in two and then cemented back together.

Some are disturbing, like Assi Meshullam’s sculpture of a rotting animal carcass, surrounded by flies, lying in a pool of blood in the center of the piece.

Others are vague, like Gal Weinstein’s contribution: a blank bowl holding a bundle of pencils.

“I thought, ‘Wow, he hasn’t done much work,’” Damelin said. “But it’s a blank slate to write a peace agreement. It’s extraordinary.”

Damelin and Awwad both said they see the exhibition as a means to spread their message of peace. But if the whole ceramic bowl thing doesn’t work out, Awwad has a backup plan for solving the conflict: cigarettes.

“Every Israeli or Palestinian who wants to smoke has to buy cigarettes from the other side,” he jokingly suggested. “There’d be peace in a day.”