Bibi’s House
An exhibition in the building of the Yaffa Arab Democratic School for Science and Technology, 13 Gaza Street, Jaffa.
Within the Festival of Housing Interiors.
Opening hours: Friday May 20 10:00-17:00, Saturday 10:00-20:00
Curator: Gil Mualem Doron, Artist-Teacher and Head, Studio for Community Architecture
Facebook page of project: http://www.facebook.com/yafa.schoolart

The exhibit “Bibi’s House” is a project in the frame of “Artist-Teacher – a cooperation between Gil Mualem Doron and pupils of the Arab Democratic School. The exhibit deals with the history of the school building and of Jaffa within the creative frame of “pedagogic art” and the artistic political involvement in the urban space. The exhibition includes a sound presentation overflowing from the walls of the building into the street, an art-video documentation of artistic involvement of the pupils in the city space (primarily in Manshieh District), photos and architectural models. At the opening of the exhibition the pupils will make an additional artistic intervention in the adjoining white plaza that connects between the school and the Tel Aviv-Jaffa College – a plaza where, until 1948, there were orange groves. The exhibition is a part of the Festival of Housing Interiors.
 
Bibi’s House is a well house built in 1910 in the Jaffa Muslim style by Haj Ali Bibi who was head of one of Jaffa’s rich families. In the 1948 war the family left the house in the expectation of returning when the battles ended – something denied them till this day. The house and surrounding orange groves were confiscated by the state and sold into private hands. In the beginning the building served light industry, and from the 1950s it became a technological school. For the last five years it has housed the Arab Democratic School. The exhibition focuses on two main locations: the Bibi House in Nuzha District (13 Gaza Street), and Manshieh District (where, according to Bibi’s grandson who lives in Amman, the family had another house).
 
The exhibition also includes the showing of “Jaffa,” a film by Eyal Sivan and Trabulsi Productions which deals with the history of citrus growing in Jaffa before 1948, and “manshieh,” a film made by Zochrot Foundation and edited by Ranin Jiris which documents interviews with Salah Mitzri and Aftahar Turc, two displaced refugees from Manshieh.
 
"The borderline work of culture demands an encounter with `newness` that is not part of the continuum of past and present. It creates a sense of the new as an insurgent act of cultural translation. Such art does not merely recall the past as  social cause or aesthetic precedent; it renews the past, refiguring it as a contingent `in-between` space, that innovates and interrupts the performance of the present. The `past-present` becomes part of the necessity, not the nostalgia, of living" Homi  K. Bhaba , The Location of Culture
 
Additional information, photos and interviews can be obtained from:
Gil Mualem Doron, curator of the exhibition
Artist-Teacher, Yaffa Arab Democratic School
Head, Studio for Community Architecture
email: gilmdoron@gmail.com