A Conversation with Inass Yassin, Guest Curator, "A People by the Sea: Narratives of the Palestinian Coast", The Palestinian Museum, by James Scarborough

Guest-curated by Inass Yassin, the Palestinian Museum’s exhibition, A People by the Sea: Narratives of the Palestinian Coast, documents the history of the Palestinian coast. The exhibition spans two hundred years, from the mid-eighteenth century to 1948. It features archival images, videos, historical artifacts from Palestinians’ daily life, interactive stations, maps, oral history testimonies, historical documents, and works of art. Artists include Manar Zuabi, Bashar Khalaf, Dima Srouji, Shareef Sarhan, Essa Grayeb, Amir Zuabi, and Nasser Soumi.

Below follows an interview with Inass Yassin. She is an artist as well as a curator. She has an MFA from Maine College of Art and and MA from the University of Southampton. And she was the director of the Birzeit University Museum from 2010 to 2017. She has shown her work in Palestine and abroad: in New York, Portland ME, Leipzig, Oslo, Eindhoven, and Dubai, in addition to residencies in Braziers, the United Kingdom; Makan, Jordan and Cittadella Arte in Italy. Her work is found in public and private local and international collections. She has earned grants or scholarships from the Fulbright Student Program, the Arab Fund for Art and Culture AFAC, the Ford Foundation, and the Hani Qaddoumi Foundation.

JS: What inspired the exhibition?

IY: The exhibition was part of the museum’s exhibition program since December 2018, I was not there yet, but when I was invited to curate the show, I had the chance to learn more about more potential on how to read history and the works of the two historian consultants Dr. Adel Manaa and Dr. Mahmud Yazbak have offered me alot to walk through.

JS: What drew your focus on the Palestinian coast? In particular, why now?

IY: Collectively the coast has always been a significant historical mark that was emotionally inscribed in how they see themselves. it is the location from where they were expelled, their exile continues, and it is where they shall return.

JS: What curatorial issue did you want your exhibition to address?

IY: The scale that I should bring onto the stage, the parameters that a historical narrative can present. The gabs and potentials in constructing more expanded versions of the story of Palestine. 

JS: What was its biggest challenge?

IY: Where to stand and to what end you should go. every location in history-geography had tempting ventures. The multi-layering of the research made it hard to reach decisions of what to select in such a broad frame of historical narrative that expands across 200 years. The quarantine also created lots of logistical and technical issues.

JS: The exhibition celebrates the enduring spirit of the Palestinian people, culture, and history. How would you characterize this spirit?

IY: I would not say celebrate, I see it as investigation, expanding and offering. If one finds the reason for celebration that might be the combination or the structure which sets Nakba in its broader historical scale so it is positioned as a phase not as determinant reality. It is an exhibition about history that could hint or offer what the future can bring.

This sounds like a big question to answer. Palestinians are multifaceted and vibrant, like every people and like every lively experience in this existence. They have in common that they are rooted to Palestine and they have perseverance to stay and the determination to decolonize it. For the refugees who are mostly expelled from the coast they live to return home. But this is not necessarily Palestinian, it is a human nature to act against transgression played against you.

JS: The exhibition presents two narratives. One, the ascent of Akka (Acre) in the mid-nineteenth century. The other, the ascent of Yafa (Jaffa) in the nineteenth century. What is constant about the two narratives? How do they diverge? Combined, what do these two narratives say about Palestine’s present and future?

IY: Akka presents a a narrative prior to the statehood in its modern conception, yet political entities semi-independent from Ottoman state managed to build the foundation for the to become Palestinian cities. The history of Akka in the mid 18th century shows the potential that was realized by one of the inland leaders, despite the odds in the late Ottoman phase.  In Yafa, it was different, that the Ottoman wanted to bring the administration to be centralized again. The time after the Ottoman Tanzimat Reforms witnessed a combination of forces that helped in the transformation of the city to be the prosperous socioeconomic hub since the mid-19th century. The case of Yafa presents Palestine in a moment where the divergent forces came into play. European interest and interference in the Ottoman legacy, the empowerment of local political elites, the rise of Palestinian capital, world market and Jewish immigration. Yaffa is presented here as an influx until the Ottoman empire falls.  The two cases bring different scenario of the realization of the “Balad” which the Arabic word that refers to Palestine in its cultural, political social emotional sense for the Palestinians. and what the exhibition creates is an opportunity to see that the “Balad” can be realized in different senses. if not through a named statehood. 

JS: A stated goal of the exhibition is to re-examine the 1947 - 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland upon the creation of the Israeli state. What did you find?

IY: Since 1948 Refugees have been in the center of the cultural production and the academic fields of studies. The exhibition was not the arena to find anything about the refugees. Every Palestinian does live or learn about the expulsion every day. It is part of the identity formation.

JS: What’s the connection between the Palestinian impulse for self-determination and its bond with the sea?

IY: The connection to the sea is empowering. The longing to reach the sea is natural. But here the symbolic meaning of the sea and the wound of Nakba it represents adds up. Another fact that empowers this connection and makes it part of the collective and national goal, is the fact that most Palestinians who live in Palestine can't reach it because of the Israeli military occupation and segregation. This multiplies the fascination and magnifies the symbolism.

JS: How does your background as an artist inform the conception and execution of the exhibition?

IY: I think it helped in two ways; in one sense through my practice I find myself performing different roles in my different projects. When I turned to work on the curation it was not an exception.

Second, finding a way to the “how to” questions was within my tool kit. selecting the narratives and existing objects was challenging but also the decision of what to make to illustrate an idea was a big part of the game, and being a maker was very helpful.

JS: Describing not just your artistic and curatorial practices, but everything you do, you once wrote, “Performativity of each project should be transformative. They shall push boundaries, and of course, they will be pushed back; this is where things start to shimmer... " The sea, of course, shimmers. How, though, is this exhibition transformative? What is its push and push back point?

IY: To know, what we chose to know is transformative.

JS: What’s the one thing you want viewers to take away from the exhibition?

IY: I aspire that they realize that history in fact is larger than what we think, but what we can think in reality could be larger than history.

The exhibition runs until October 31, 2022. The Museum is located at Museum Street, Birzeit, Birzeit. Publications, and accompanying public, educational and intellectual activities supplement the exhibition. For more information, call +970 2 294 1948, contact Haneen Saleh at [email protected] or visit here.