Dor Guez

Dor Guez is an artist and an educator. He was born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian family from Lydda on his mother's side and a family of Jewish immigrants from North Africa on his father's. Guez's photography, video installations, essays, and lecture-performances explore the relationship between art, narrative, trauma, memory, and displacement. Interrogating personal experiences and official accounts of the past, Guez raises questions about contemporary art's role in narrating unwritten histories and re-contextualizing visual and written documents. In the past 20 years, his studies and artistic work focus on archival materials and photographic practices of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as mapping traces of violence in the landscape.

Guez received his Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University in 2014 and earned his professorship from Bezalel Academy of the Arts and Design in 2018. He is the founder of the CPA (Christian-Palestinian Archive), The chief curator of the Bezalel Gallery of Contemporary Art, and the director of Seaport: Mediterranean Curatorial Residency Program.

To date, eight catalogues have been published internationally about Guez's practice. Publishers include Distanz, New England Press, and A.M Qattan Foundation. Guez's work has been displayed in over 45 solo exhibitions worldwide; MAMBO: Museum of Modern Art, Bogota (2022); Kunst im Kreuzgang, Bielefeld (2021); Futura Gallery, Prague, (2020); American Colony Archive, Jerusalem (2019); MAN Museum, Nuoro (2018); DEPO, Istanbul (2017); the Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem (2017); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2016); the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2015); the Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (2015); the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Massachusetts (2013); Artpace, San Antonio (2013); the Mosaic Rooms, Centre for Contemporary Arab Culture & Art, London (2013); the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2010); and Petach Tikva Museum of Art, (2009). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including shows at the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art (2016); the North Coast Art Triennial, Denmark (2016); Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina (2015); the 17th, 18th, and 19th International Contemporary Art Festival Videobrasil, São Paulo (2011, 2013, 2015); Cleveland Institute of Art (2014); Triennale Museum, Milan (2014); Centre of Contemporary Art, Torun (2014); Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (2014); Maxxi Museum, Rome (2013); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011); and the Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana (2010).

Guez is represented by Dvir Gallery, Paris/Brussels/Tel Aviv, Carlier-Gebauer Gallery, Berlin/Madrid, and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg/Cape Town/London.

Lilies of the Field, 2019-2021

Based on an extended research of pressed-flower albums in the archive of the American Colony in Jerusalem, Guez’s series examines the link between nature and culture, copy and origin.

Colony 2022

"Colony" is based on a five-year study conducted in the Archives of the American Colony in Jerusalem and the Archives of the Library of Congress in Washington DC.

The Christian Palestinian Archive

The Christian Palestinian Archive (CPA) is a growing collection of archival visual materials from the first half of the 20th century, documenting the personal histories of Christian Palestinian communities worldwide.

The Composer, 2017

The project is centered on the story of Hagop, an Armenian composer whose family was expelled from Kütahya during World War I. "The Composer" point out a connection between the art of composition and Armenian topography.

The Architect, 2016

The Installation focuses on 13 of Kemal's photographs from 1939 that document the Turkish Republic's Victory Day Parade in Ankara in August of the same year, and the funeral of the secularizing republic leader, Kemal Ataturk, that took place a few weeks later.

The Painter, 2015

Entitled 'The Painter' this installation is the first of five from a new body of work, The Sick Man of Europe. Guez's project reflects on the military history and current political climate of the Middle East through the creative practices of individual soldiers from the region.

Pendant Letters, 2014

The project features the manuscript of a play written in the 1950's in pendant lettering, by an amateur Tunisian playwright.

Bypass, 2014

This daily trek, almost a perfect parallel to the concrete scar of the separation wall, is built of the living footsteps of menial existences.

40 days, 2013

The installation relates to the Christian Palestinian cemetery in Lydd, which has been vandalized by other religious groups. The destruction reflects the position of the Christian Palestinians living in Israel as a minority within a minority.

Sabir, 2011

Guez's camera captures the setting sun on a beach in the port city of Jaffa. The lull of waves accompanies Samira Monayer's narration of her childhood years in pre-1948 Jaffa, where she could walk just 100 steps to the Mediterranean from her family home.

Go west, 2011

Go West touches upon questions of ethnicity, multi-culturalism, and East-West relations, challenging binary perceptions which pose clear boundaries between different communities and cultures.

The Nation Groves, 2010

The Nation's Groves was a government-owned agricultural company intended to manage and maintain the groves, vineyards and lands of the "absentee" Palestinians after Israel was established

Publications

Texts

Press

The copyright for any material published on this website is reserved. Any duplication or use of objects such as images, films, or texts is not permitted without written agreement.

We are not responsible for any contents linked or referred to from this website. The contents will not be checked and are subject to the control and liability of the responsible provider.

Contact