Abstract/Summary

Curators working in regional cultural institutions hold the power to participate in shaping the cultural narrative of their regions, nations. peoples and communities. Like schools, religious centers and government institutions, they can become powerful agents in duplicating and reinforcing dominant social and governing agendas. At the heart of my thesis is the notion that inclusivity in culture is based on the re-visitation of regional, subjugated, situated knowledges - knowledges that has been hidden by colonial superstructures in areas that have been under colonial occupation. Focusing on curatorial strategies that support regional communities of the Negev desert in southern Israel, Keeping the Edges Open studies a series of exhibitions and events that took place in the Negev - in part curated by myself - to examine how and why, in a majority of cases, the curatorial agendas of Negev cultural institutions replicate global cultural norms and operate according to a western point of view on culture. Specifically, why curatorial agendas of Negev institutions shy away from forms of culture that raise topics about conflictual issues like land, land-use and land-rights, which would challenge existing dominant social and governing agendas. Drawing my analysis from a series of exhibitions that I curated during my four-year curatorial post as the founder and curator of two institutions in the Negev desert (where I lived since my teenage years and returned to as an artist/curator), the research proposes to consider non-western and non-academic forms of cultural research – such as oral history and fieldwork – to develop counter-curatorial methods that could challenge the westernized curatorial methods that dominate Negev cultural institutions.