Thirty years of Musrara

Musrara: The Naggar Multidisciplinary School of Art and Society is celebrating 30 years to its establishment with special events and exhibitions, featuring the works and creations of graduates, current students, as well as teachers and social activists.

Beginning with its main event on October 24, the school celebrated with musical performances, video art and films, and the opening of the “Free Radicals and Antioxidants” exhibition, which explores art as a means of healing for an individual, society, and politics.

“We are marking 30 years to the Musrara School through several special events,” said Avi Sabag, the school’s founder and director, in a recent interview with In Jerusalem.

“I don’t know of another art institution that has managed to survive for so long in such a complex neighborhood.”

Indeed, one of the unique characteristics of the Musrara School is the close relationship it shares with the neighborhood in which it is located, Musrara. More commonly known by this Arabic name (its official Hebrew name is Morasha, meaning “heritage”), the neighborhood overlooking the Old City and flanked by the Russian Compound and Mea She’arim has been home to the art institution for three decades.

Founded in 1987, the school provides higher educational training for approximately 160 students in five different departments: new media, visual communication, new music, photography, and phototherapy. Alongside their studies, students are involved with community projects and social action initiatives, with photography projects for disadvantaged communities including workshops for mentally and physically challenged Jewish and Arab children and a phototherapy program for senior citizens.

The school has also made significant forays into the international community. In recent months, Musrara has presented works of art in galleries in Venice and Berlin. Musrara was also chosen to represent Israel in the Photography Biennale in Amsterdam in May 2012.

Sabag, who made aliya to Israel from a small city near Rabat, Morocco, when he was five years old, first came to the Musrara neighborhood after his army service. At the time, he discovered a hard-up neighborhood engulfed in hopelessness. Many of the veteran residents had immigrated to Israel from North Africa in the 1950s, and the neighborhood suffered from poverty, crime and neglect. Sabag worked to forge a connection with veteran residents, building a foundation of “trust and respect.”

The Israeli Black Panthers movement emerged in Musrara in the early 1970s, protesting discrimination and struggling for social justice in a fight that swept the media and nation. However, with the advent of the Yom Kippur War, the Black Panthers were quickly forgotten by the public, according to Sabag.

“We wanted to change the state of isolation that residents in Musrara were experiencing and to build bridges,” explained Sabag. “In those days, people were ashamed to say they were from Musrara. In the 1980s, there was a lot of tension in the neighborhood and antiestablishment sentiment.”

“We got to know the Black Panther activists themselves and their families, as well as other locals who lived here, listening to their stories, hearing what they had to say, doing thorough research,” elaborated Sabag. “We went on to publish a book about the Black Panthers that was able to make an impression on Israeli society and the media and helped bring the Black Panthers movement back to the public eye.”

To this day, special tours of the Musrara neighborhood organized by the school are sometimes led by former social activists from the neighborhood.

“Today, people are no longer embarrassed to say they come from Musrara; they are proud,” noted Sabag.

One of the exhibitions, which is inspired by the spirit of the Israeli Black Panthers movement and marks 30 years to the school, is called “Resistance,” which will open on October 31.

“The concept of the exhibit is very interesting,” said its curator, Ayelet Hashachar Cohen. “We played with the Hebrew word for resistance – “hitnagdut.” On one hand, it means to take action, but it can also mean to stop something from happening. The exhibition explores the concept of protest – both on a societal level and on a private level – through resistance.”

According to Cohen, who is the head of the photography department at the Musrara School, the “Resistance” exhibition is a collaborative effort by nine artists who are all Musrara graduates. The artists researched the subject of protests, utilizing photo archives open to the public, including the Musrara Archives, which was established by the art school to document the political, societal and cultural history of the neighborhood.

“This is a significant exhibition for the public and for the students, in light of the social protests that have taken place in Israel and across the world. It raises questions about the role of protests and resistance in the private and public domain,” said Cohen, who herself comes from an eighth-generation Jerusalem family and lives in Tel Aviv.

“We see that there is much social awareness in the last decade and people taking on issues with their own hands.

There are works in the exhibition that deal with the symbolic elements of protest both from the present and past – the raised clenched fist of the Black Panthers, for example,” she added.

One of the artist taking part in the “Resistance” exhibition is Michal Tobiass, a 2012 graduate of the Musrara School’s photography department. Her work, which focuses on body movements as symbols of protest, features a sculpture of raised hands whose fists are crossed in an x symbol, reminiscent of the famous news photo of Eritrean asylum-seekers protesting at the Holot detention center by holding their hands up in that particular gesture.

“I wanted to bring attention to the plight of the Eritrean asylum-seekers in Israel. In my Tel Aviv studio, I asked a young Eritrean to model his hands for me for the sculpture,” Tobiass told In Jerusalem.

“There is a lot of power in symbols; it’s a means of raising awareness for an issue that no one initially cares about,” she said.

The “Resistance” exhibition opens on Tuesday, October 31, at 7 p.m. at the Social Gallery on 22 Shivtei Yisrael Street, third floor. Both the “Resistance” exhibition and the “Free Radicals and Antioxidants” exhibition (located on 9 Ha’ah Street in Musrara) will be open until January 25, 2018.

How the Musrara School of Art and Society brought hope to a forgotten neighborhood.