Art & Culture

In March 2013 the Second Mediterranean Biennale will open in Sakhnin, initiated by the artists and curators Belu-Simion Fainaru and Avital Bar-Shay in co-operation with Mifal HaPayis and under the auspices of the Municipality of Sakhnin, the Ministry of Education, Culture & Sport, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the newspaper Haaretz, the French Cultural Institute, the Goethe Institute, The Polish Institute, the Italian Cultural Institute, the Embassy of Austria, and the Rich Foundation. Preceding events have been scheduled to take place during December:a6/12 – Painting workshops with Florin Stefan, Professor of Art in Cluj University, Romania. Stefan will reside in Sakhnin, meet with the residents there, and execute paintings on the subject of "Sakhnin – the town and its residents". These paintings will be displayed in the exhibition in 2013. Stefan will teach the students long-established methods of preparing coloring matter in techniques such as making paint from eggs or dairy cheese, which was traditionally used in Romania for painting icons on glass during the Middle Ages.
14/12 – The arrival in Sakhnin of Anna Anders and Maria Vedder, video artists and professors of art in Berlin University. While in Sakhnin, they will work together with Muslim women for three days teaching them the art of film making and introducing them to the subject of video art. They will wander around Sakhnin together and shoot a film on the town which will be screened during the exhibition in 2013. In the last week of December – A study day on the subject of "God and religious concepts in the three religions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity". The issue of tension between the three monotheistic religions presents one of the great challenges with which the region has to cope. The Mediterranean Biennale will initiate the promotion of mutual dialogue, patience, and understanding between these religions. The meetings will include a platform for maintaining a dialogue and mutual learning among several leading representatives of the three religions – rabbis, priests, and imams – in order to discuss where religion stands within the texture of relationships between Jews and Arabs. A presentation will also be given by Moshe Idel, Israel Prize Laureate and an international expert on the study of Jewish theology. The Biennale will be an artistic event in a Mediterranean context with regional co-operation effected by means of the exhibition of works of art expressing and enhancing this concept. The event will play a leading role in creating a new network of connections between artists from diverse countries in the region. It is based on new cultural systems set against the hierarchal system that discriminates between center and periphery, and will result in a system that measures local creativity by the extent to which it relates to ideas emanating from the powerful centers in the west.