Dor Guez was born in Jerusalem and currently lives and works in Jaffa, he received his Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University in 2014 and earned his professorship from Bezalel Academy of the Arts and Design in 2018. To date, eight catalogues have been published internationally about Guez’s practice. Publishers include Distanz, New England Press, and A.M Qattan Foundation. Dor Guez’s work has been displayed in over thirty solo exhibitions worldwide, including the American Colony Archive, Jerusalem (2019), the Man Museum, Nuoro (2018); DEPO, Istanbul (2017); the Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem (2017); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2016); the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2015); the Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (2015); the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Massachusetts (2013); Artpace, San Antonio (2013); the Mosaic Rooms, Centre for Contemporary Arab Culture & Art, London (2013); the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2010); and Petach Tikva Museum of Art, (2009). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including shows at the Jewish Museum, NY (2021), the Israel Museum (2021), Susquehanna Art Museum (2019), Musée des beaux arts, Tourcoing (2018), New Zuzeum Art Center, Riga (2017), Arab World Institute, Paris (2017), the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art (2016); the North Coast Art Triennial, Denmark (2016); Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina (2015); the 17th, 18th, and 19th International Contemporary Art Festival Videobrasil, São Paulo (2011, 2013, 2015); the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2014); Cleveland Institute of Art (2014); Triennale Museum, Milan (2014); Centre of Contemporary Art, Torun (2014); Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (2014); Maxxi Museum, Rome (2013); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011); and the Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana (2010). Guez’s works are part of numerous international public collections, including Tate Museum (London), Rose Art Museum (Boston), FRAC collection (Marseille), Israel Museum (Jerusalem), Schocken collection (Te Aviv), BNL collection (Italy), Petach Tikva Museum of Art (Petach Tikva), Brandis University (Waltham), Recanati collection (New York), Beit Hatfutsot (Tel Aviv), amongst others.

Sabir

‘Sabir’, from the Latin root “to know”, refers to a vernacular shared by native speakers of many different languages who come in contact. The best known of the world’s Sabirs is the dialect of middle-eastern ports, which bears elements of French, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew, Maltese, and Spanish. A sabir dialect is a result of a cultural development; it marks a new nation’s arrival. The subject of the video is Samira, the artist’s grandmother, whose family used to live on Jaffa port’s edge. Samira describes pre-1948 Jaffa, and the subsequent departure of most of the city’s Arab residents to the other cities/countries, in a mixture of her mother tongue – Arabic – and her later-acquired Hebrew. While most of her childhood memories are recounted in Arabic, the war and its consequences are described in Hebrew. In the background, the sun sets serenely against the Jaffa coast. The discrepancy between Samira’s story and the postcard background, with its everyday commotion of surfers, joggers, and dog-walkers, is poignant. The sun’s height in the frame also serves as a visual marker of Samira’s story’s progress and of passing time. ‘Sabir’ was premiered at Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv.