Shoshan's interest in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict from an architectural perspective began over a decade ago when, assigned to design a shopping mall in Tel Aviv, she discovered a string of issues during her research phase. Her investigation revealed that part of the site designated to this project was a then ruined Palestinian cemetery, an occurrence that inspired Shoshan to spend the next years investigating the history of the Israel / Palestine situation.
The book Atlas of the Conflict — which is a key feature of the exhibition — looks to articulate the conflict from an array of standpoints through maps, shining a light on facts such as over 80 Palestinian villages no longer being recorded on official Israeli maps, despite accounting for the residence of over 100,000 people.
The exhibition starts at page number 437 of The Atlas of the Conflict and continues into an exploration of ideas, snapshots and associations, that could be raised once seeing a white donkey tied with a rope, covered with beige tape and being transformed into a zebra by a beautiful Palestinian boy. This in order to fulfill the desire of the Gaza's for normality, which in this case means possessing a zoo as a space for urban leisure.
ZOO, or the letter Z just after Zionism
NAiM / Bureau Europa
Avenue Céramique 226, Maastricht
Through 20 May 2012
[Read our review of Atlas of the Conflict]
