The exhibition, curated by GC Art History student and Presidential Research Fellow Chelsea Haines, opens this evening from 6-8 PM. 

Dor Guez founded the Christian Palestinian Archive (CPA) in 2009 after he discovered a suitcase under his grandparents’ bed filled with old photographs. Today, much more than a family album, the CPA contains thousands of digital images from Christian Palestinians across the world. In this gallery, Guez presents the origins of this ongoing project: the story of his grandmother, Samira Monayer. Her childhood in Jaffa and expulsion in 1948 during the Palestinian exodus from land claimed by Israel (known as al-Nakba, “the catastrophe”), her family’s global dispersal to Lydd (Lod), Amman, Cyprus, Cairo, and London—and eventually, her life in Israel—are mediated through a series of videos and digitally manipulated archival materials the artist calls “scanograms.”

(Caption: Dor Guez, Samira, Lod Ghetto, a year after 1948, from the series Scanogram #1, 2010, manipulated readymade, archival inkjet print, 23 1/2 x 29 1/2 inches)