Jack Persekian will also feature in the ARTISTS WEEK partnership issue of
Contemporary Visual Art+Culture Broadsheet
with his text, 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone'.

Nablus Soap–In 1996 Jack Persekian invited artist Mona Hatoum to create a site-specific installation in his Anadiel Gallery in Jerusalem. The result was Present tense (1996), a powerful and provocative work where the artist used bars of the famous Palestinian soap to recreate the devastating division of Palestinian Territory mapped out by the 1993 Oslo Accords. The ephemeral or perishable nature of the soap alludes most precisely to the unsustainability of the arrangements for control of the West Bank and Gaza, and over the years has forced Persekian to reflect on the failed promise of peace, the separation wall and the reality of a volatile, shifting and disintegrating country.

Jack Persekian is a curator and producer, founder and director of Anadiel Gallery and the Al-Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem. From 2004 to 2007 he was Head Curator of the Sharjah Biennial, followed by Artistic Director of the Sharjah Biennial from 2007 to 2011 and Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation 2009 to 2011. His recent curated exhibitions include: Disorientation II, Manaret Saadiyat, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi (2009), Never-Part, Bozar, Brussels (2008), Dubai Next, co-curated with Rem Koolhaas at Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany (2008), The Jerusalem Show, Al-Ma'mal Foundation, Jerusalem (2007 to date); Reconsidering Palestinian Art, Cuenca, Spain (2006); Disorientation–Contemporary Arab Artists from the Middle East, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2003). Additional productions and artistic direction include: The Palestinian Cultural Evening at the World Economic Forum in the Dead Sea, Jordan (2004), and the Millennium Celebrations in Bethlehem–Bethlehem 2000 (2000). Jack Persekian has recently been appointed as Visiting professor at the Royal College of Art, London, UK.

His visit to Australia, hosted by the Cotemporary Art Centre of SA, Adelaide, and Artspace Visual Arts Centre, Sydney, has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

Kate Fowle

Kate Fowle is the Executive Director of Independent Curators International (ICI). From 2007-08 Fowle was the inaugural International Curator for the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, China, and from 2002-07 she was the Chair of the MA Program in Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, which she founded with Ralph Rugoff in 2002. From 1996-2002 she was co-director of smith + fowle, a curatorial partnership based in East London, and from 1994-96 she was Curator at the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne, East Sussex. Recent published texts include Charcoal: Robert Longo; Sonic Pavilion: Doug Aitken (forthcoming 2011); Althea Thauberger: An afterword (Artspeak. Canada, 2009) Harrell Fletcher: Beyond an appreciation of dogs, books and cheeses. (Domaine de Kerguehennec, France, 2008); Who Cares? Contemporary Curating (Apex Art, NY, 2007). She has written for numerous magazines including Parkett, Modern Painters, Manifesta Journal, the Exhibitionist, and Frieze