Fondazione Merz, Museo Egizio di Torino and MAH – Musée d’art et d’histoire of Geneva present GAZA, the future has an ancient heart. Materials and memories of the Mediterranean, a major international exhibition that, through a dialogue between archaeology and contemporary art, illustrates the historical and cultural depth of Gaza, a millennial crossroads of trade, cultures and beliefs. In so doing, the exhibition removes the territory from an exclusively topical interpretation and invites reflection on the universal value of heritage as a place of memory, identity and future.
The project brings together a selection of over eighty archaeological finds from the MAH – Musée d’art et d’histoire of Geneva on behalf of the State of Palestine and the Egyptian Museum of Turin – dating from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman period – and works by contemporary Palestinian and international artists Samaa Emad, Mirna Bamieh, Khalil Rabah, Vivien Sansour, Wael Shawky, Dima Srouji and Akram Zaatari.
The exhibition also features a selection of photographs of Gaza drawn from the UNRWA archive – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
The artefacts on display from Gaza are a selection from the collection of around 500 pieces temporarily held at the MAH in Geneva on behalf of the State of Palestine, initially intended for the creation of an archaeological museum in Palestine, a project that has remained unfinished due to the conflicts that have affected the area.
The exhibition forms part of the ongoing debate on the destruction of cultural heritage, which comprises not only archaeological sites, historic monuments and other tangible representations of the past that have been lost or severely damaged, but also the people who experienced, celebrated and identified them as part of their cultural inheritance and who have since died or been forced to flee as a result of war. In this sense, Gaza represents merely the latest in a sequence of destructive events, including wars and other conflicts, that continue to cause damage across the world.
One of the objectives of the GAZA, the future has an ancient heart exhibition is to preserve the memory of a millennia-old civilisation and the communities that embodied it, while raising public awareness of the need to safeguard and transmit cultural heritage threatened by war and oblivion through a dialogue between archaeological finds and contemporary works of art.
