Dor Guez

Born in: 1983
From: Jerusalem, Israel, Palestine, State of
Lives and works: Jaffa, Israel, Palestine, State of
Represented by: Dvir Gallery
Website: https://www.dorguez.com/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dor_Guez

UN goals

Biography

Archival materials are Dor Guez first ressource to revisit the story of one of the most controversial territories in the world, Palestine and Israël. Coming from a multicultural background – jewish, muslim and christian – his work explores his family story allowing him to reflect on the region’s vital heritage. Using vernacular photographs, video installations, “scanograms'' and through his lectures and performances, Guez evinces how archives are part of a multilayered process helping him to rehabilitate untold narratives.

Photographs and written records aid him re-examine his family memory and that of his region making his work comparable to Christian Boltanski’s oeuvre. Objects and archival material for them are perceived as proof of collective trauma and displacement.

But while his work certainly engages in wounds, he prefers to focus on how these materials can disclose unknown episodes from history to help build new relations within the territory. His work about the fauna in Jerusalem draws him close to early photographers like Henry Fox Talbot whose aim was to record and make a thorough inventory for future botanists like himself.

Career highlights

Solo shows

2022, Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Columbia: Catastrophe
2020, Louis Roederer Discovery Award, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Paris, France: Locusts
2017, DEPO Art Center, Istanbul, Turkey: The Sick Man of Europe: The Architect
2013, The Mosaic Rooms, Al-Qattan Foundation, London, UK: 40 Days
2011, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israël: The Nation’s Groves

Group shows

2021, MUZA, the Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel: Photomenta
2017, Minerva Projects, Denver, United States: Fixed Point Perspective: Ottoman Studio Photography and Its Contemporary Legacy
2015, 19th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC, São Paulo, Brasil: Videobrasil
2014, Creative Association of Curators TOK, St. Petersburg, Russia: Silent Among Us
2014, Tokyo Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan: Neighbors