Vanishing Point is an exhibition and research project initiated by Or Tshuva that examined the years of 1947-1948 as a critical time frame in the formation process of four young nations: India, Pakistan (and later on Bangladesh), Israel and Palestine. It brought together contemporary artists from these countries and invited them to rethink their seminal national narratives from a global perspective. Their works explore modes of constructing national narratives while addressing questions of collective experiences and memories, and the mechanisms through which these are formed in post-colonial societies.

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Based on the perception of seminal ethos as narratives that tend to highlight the importance of national history and to distinguish and anchor it with geographical affiliation, this project wished to produce an opposing model of thought. It relied on the circumstantial and historical similarities between the Middle Eastern and South Asian cases (which include British colonial governance, arbitrary partition plans, division of Muslim population between separate isolated territories on east and west, major population transfers and millions of human beings disinherited from their home and property) and wondered how learning and dealing with the other’s memory through the lens of global history, may produce a new, broader and more complicated perspective of one’s own narrative.

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The two parts of the project were exhibited in Beit Hagefen: Arab-Jewish Cultural Center(December 2015) and in Artport (April 2016) with the support of the Israeli Lottery Fund.

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Artists: Shumon Ahmed, Tamir Zadok, Michal Baror, Rahul S Ravi, Rana Abu Freiha, Nissreen Najjar, Baptist Coelho, Basir Mahmood, Hadar Saifan, Shilpa Gupta, Noa Gur, Fared Abu Shakra, Imran Channa, Tejal Shah, Scandar Copti and Rabih Boukhary, Amir Yatziv, Thalia Hoffman

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Press:

https://www.jpost.com/Metro/The-view-from-the-other-side-451372

http://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/art/newexhibitions/1.2795001

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/leisure/.premium-1.704132

http://tohumagazine.com/article/stealing-thief

https://did.li/H3Hw5