Crossroads and Contexts: Interviews on Archaeology in Gaza

FAREED ARMALY, an artist and curator whose international career in the arts includes large-scale collaborative works on the theme of Palestine, is the former director of K¨unstlerhaus Stuttgart. Invited by the Geneva museum to be the participating artist in its Gaza archaeological exhibition, he created a multifaceted installation titled “Shar(e)d Domains,” which uses as its starting point a key artifact on display in the exhibition itself: an ancient Gaza amphora discovered as shards during excavations under the Geneva Cathedral. The centerpiece of his installation is a sculptural representation of the seams resulting from reassembling the shards. Titled “New Amphora,” it is simultaneously a faithful replication of the artifact and a strikingly modern and original form. Prominently displayed in the exhibition along with a text by the artist, the “new amphora” embodies the idea of historical narrative as a reassembled but incomplete collection of fragments. Armaly currently lives in Berlin.