Gray Area

VIENNA—To mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel—or, from the Arab point of view, the nakba (“division”) of Palestine—the Essl Museum of Contemporary Art, in Vienna, is staging “Overlapping Voices” May 15 through October 26. Presenting 16 varying perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by artists from both groups, the exhibition examines not only the political and cultural issues that separate the parties
but also the areas of common ground between their ideas. The Palestinian artist Osama Zatar contributes his ironic, Dadaistic sculptures constructed with found objects and scrap materials from his ravaged hometown, Ramallah. Israeli artist Yoav Weiss is showing facsimiles of parts of the separation wall dividing Jerusalem, which Weiss has daintily stenciled with spray-paint. For €10 ($16) per square meter, people can buy the actual pieces through his Web site—but they can’t claim their purchases until the day when the structure has been dismantled. Weiss based his concept on the Berlin Wall, parts of which were sold as souvenirs after its fall.

"Gray Area" originally appeared in the May 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's May 2008 Table of Contents.