GALLERY INSTALLATION

Olive Fair is a participatory physical/virtual art installation that renders visible the material conditions and the strategies of survival and resistance in occupied Palestine. The installation displays olive products by Palestinian producers - obtained through Sindyanna, a fair-trade company based in Jaffa - side-by-side with video documentation of a direct action by the International Solidarity Movement in support of a group of Palestinian growers in the West Bank who were resisting the uprooting of their olive trees by Israeli soldiers and bulldozers. Olive Fair invites gallery visitors to take product samples in exchange for contributing personal responses to a website, thus enabling networked consciousness and informed dialogue. As the olive products in the gallery diminish, what remains in the physical space - transmitted through the ISM video - is the reality of the struggle in Palestine cultivating a growing public awareness and solidarity in the virtual space. First exhibited at WILL - part of Negotiations: From a Piece of Land to a Land of Peace - at A Space Gallery, Toronto, Canada, 2003.
THE PRICE OF OLIVES : THE WORKSHOP