On the Seam

Finally, art comes to life once again at the College's Art School.

As public gatherings following COVID-19 protocols are now approved, Sapir’s art gallery is open to visitors with a striking new exhibition called On the Seam, featuring the works of Mai Daas, an aspiring artist from the City of Tira. Mai’s photomontage brings home the perpetual sense of living on the threshold between multiple aspects of her identity – as an Arab woman and a mother, a spouse and a feminist, a Moslem and a Palestinian, and an individual with a powerful sense of self and the will to assert it. Her visual aesthetic simultaneously expresses beauty and an ever present wound: always healing, always there. Far from holding her at bay, this liminal state is a source of tremendous energy for Daas, often in the form of anger and frustration, at other times empowerment and creativity.  On the seam between the various aspects of her vision, the individual meets the collective, the personal intersects the political. Visitors have acclaimed the exhibition, describing it as beautiful and poignant, but also challenging and unnerving. Daas work reminds us that wounds may heal but they continue to define who we are.