INFIDEL

I am a foreigner. Did not grow up here, am not Jewish or Arab. We moved here almost six years ago from America. This work is about communication in a city everybody thinks they own and have a right to control. From Texas to Tehran, Jerusalem is a city owned by others. Owned on paper, in Scripture, by generational debt, political inheritance and religious sloganeering. Accordingly, with so many competing narratives, so much belief and genuine faith, it is a city of unbelief, a city of unbelievers. It is easy to give up on Jerusalem, easy to leave. As a city of pilgrimage it suffers from the revolving door syndrome of infatuation and abandonment, blinding people to ideals and binding others to fanaticism. Just look on any street in the city and you will see people lost in devotion. New luxury apartments are being commissioned by the hour to support an economy that doesn’t exist and likely won’t ever. Full of celebrity politicians, arms full of arguments, Jerusalem is the star of the soap opera of the Middle East, a carnival permanently “in town.” It is also the number one crisis. At the corner of Bezalel and Ha-Gidem street is a building with a portico supported by square, stone faced pillars. These pillars are a message board for competing graffiti styles and imagery. Two years ago I saw the phrase “I Love War” on one pillar and subsequently in other locations. I am indebted to the person who tagged this for at least one painting in this show. That phrase seems to me the most accurate diagnosis I have ever seen applied to Jerusalem. Bruised by its own multiplicity, Jerusalem is a city burdened by significance. A city waging war against itself, spiritually, architecturally, demographically. It is a city that demands a response. Staging a response, an argument, a proof, is often the result. Instead of painting, it is a city that in many ways anticipates photography as the primary means of its representation. Photography is more immediate, able to document for the sake of journalism, instant argu-ments, proof. Seeking proof, proving ones advantage, is a key component to the discourse of conflict. Artwork has the potential to be made as a gift for shared communication. Instead of taking photographs, my current response is to make paintings in the community of Jerusalem. Paintings also communicate in crisis, personal and/or political. If the work finds a relevant voice, it will be between the contradictions and cross purposes that underlie the threads of communication in this city, between the parentheses of a city in love with war, or at least in a way content with the images it currently produces. Everyone has an imaginary version of this city, one that is eternal and untangled and yet we recognise that hope is only possible while we are awake, facing reality, tangled together. If it is possible to alleviate the weight of living, to find the weightless and poetic voice no longer straining through grief, I hope it is here, in a new Jerusalem.
Matthew Doll