Artists-in-Residence-2003

The Tamkeen Workshop grant had run from 2002 - 2004 and covered a total of nine workshops. Owing to changes in USAID itself the grant was no longer available after that period so could not be extended. However. Al-Ma’mal continued to get valuable support from long-time partner, the Ford Foundation and ongoing funding also from the European Commission. A new supporter, the Open Society Institute, also came on board in 2004 enabling the Al-Ma’mal team to continue all of its core activities.

The Artist-in-Residence programme had being running parallel to the workshops and remained very successful throughout this whole period with only one project failing to get off the ground. This was the project of Ayse Erkemen who had proposed to work with Qalqilya Zoo, and particularly with their taxidermied animals. The two things that interested her, were firstly how the ‘freezing’ of life in the zoo had transformed it into a natural history museum and secondly the stories behind each of these animals that were often deeply sad but surreal and funny at the same time.

Brownie the giraffe dying while fleeing from the sounds of a gunfire, falling down and breaking his neck. Ten days later his pregnant partner Rudi having a miscarriage because of sorrow and then Brownie and his unborn giraffe son being stuffed to stand together in a special exhibition space inside the zoo.

Due to incursions and curfews imposed on Qalqilya by the Israeli army at the time of her residency in 2003/04, it was impossible to enter the city so Erkeman could not realize this project. However, the tale of the giraffe emerged along with several other strange news stories relating to Qalqilya Zoo during this period. The Zoo was celebrated in a 2008 book by Amelie Thomas entitled: Zoo on the Road to Nablus: A Story of Survival from the West Bank.

Other artists-in-residence in 2003 included Jananne Al-Ani, Rosalind Nashashibi and Zeyad Dajani whose images of King Hussein's half built and abandoned palace are below.