Sundry Modernism (Materials for a Study of Palestinian Modernism)

With Sundry Modernism, Oraib Toukan presents an informal register of modernist Palestinian architecture—an assemblage of images and stories collected from 2013 to 2015 in the cities of Nablus, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Jericho. Using her photographs as conversation prompts with various residents, historians, and architects, Toukan places the anecdotes collected thereby into political and historical context, weaving together narrative and critique. Sundry Modernism sets out to be a gesture, a nod, a salutation to, and a critique of, the lines and angles of Palestinian modernism. It is a provocation on the act of looking, and, in particular, it is a proposal for reading apolitical forms in politicized contexts.

Oraib Toukan is an artist and Clarendon Scholar at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. This bilingual English and Arabic publication follows Toukan's participation in the 5th Riwaq Biennale (2014–16), and has been produced with support from Mophradat.