Emily Jacir’s Sanctuary contribution presents an excerpt from her 2007 project Material for a Film, based on the life of Wael Zuaiter, the first Palestinian intellectual assassinated by Israeli agents outside the Middle East. The project rearticulated previously unknown ephemera from Zuaiter’s life, in tandem with Jacir’s own photographs, writings, and interviews. Jacir simultaneously offers a self-portrait as well as a portrait of a literary scholar, beloved son, and kindhearted pacifist enjoying life amid artists in Rome. The text displayed on the rug is a line from English poet Francis Thompson’s “The Mistress of Vision,” which Jacir translated into Arabic and Italian; Zuaiter quoted this line in the last article he wrote for the Italian magazine L’Espresso. Some treatments are brightly foregrounded, while others emerge slowly, raising subtle questions about political dominance and the interrelationships of nations and cultures.
