The art pieces of the Chile Secondary School for Girls


 

 

 

 

1- “THE WILL”


This piece represents the will of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, to be buried in Jerusalem, which has not yet been realized due to the Israelis refusal. The installation is a movable coffin with wheels.
 

 

 

  
2- “BOOKS AND BORDERS”



This piece is a criticism of the educational system in the Palestinian schools. The message is that the heavy load of studying is so overwhelming, it prevents the students from reading external educational books.
 

 

 

  
3- “FRAUD AND DECEPTION”
 


This piece represents the fraud and deception that people may have as part of their human nature. The student used the yellow color to represent fraud and the masks to indicate that some people have one face but others have two. In this piece, both good and evil are represented through the masks; one has a peaceful expression while the other has evil looking red eyes..
 
 

 

  
4- “RHETORIC”
 


This piece represents the rhetoric made by Arab Leaders that are usually only words with no accompanied actions.
 

 

 

  
5- “PRIVACY”

This piece is about the personal belongings of the student which are precious to her, so much so that she does not wants anyone from her family to touch them. They represent her much cherished privacy.
 

 

 

  
6- “DISCRIMINATION”
 


This is a performance art piece in which the students want to reflect the Christian-Muslim relations in their community. The students believe that the Israeli government is trying to create rifts among the Palestinians by highlighting the religious differences.
 

 

 

  
7- “IMPORTANCE OF TIME”

This piece represents the importance of time for the school students. The message is that the heavy load that is placed on the students by the Palestinian educational system leads to stress which is symbolized by exploded watches and clocks.
 

 

 

  
8- “THE NEGATIVE EFFECT OF SMOKING”
 


The students symbolized the negative effect smoking has on health by using the water pipes as snakes surrounding a smoker.
 

 

 

 

  
9- VIOLENCE
 


This piece represents the violence against females in our community; the students represented females with white smooth figures which are so fragile that any physical or verbal violence will harm them, and this harm will never be fixed and forgotten. They also hung steel chains to represent their limits in the community and a hanging rope to show that crossing these limits will lead them to the hanging rope.
 

 

 

  
10- “OLIVE TREES”


This piece is about the Israeli’s land confiscation, and how the Israeli soldiers prevent Palestinian land owners from harvesting their olive trees. The students wrapped existing olive trees in the school yard with barbed-wire to prevent the exhibition attendees from reaching them.
 

 

 

  
11- “LACK OF COMPUTERS”
 


This piece criticizes of the school’s computer shortage by displaying how students need to gather on one broken computer in the computer lab.
 

 

 

  
12- “VANITY”
 


With this piece the students criticize other girls of their age who are interested in their physical appearance. They used a model wearing indecent clothing to symbolize the desire of these girls to become prettier and gain attention.
 


 

 

 
13- “AFFAIR IN DARKNESS”


This piece criticizes the ‘urfi marriage, which is unacceptable by the community and does not give women their full rights. The girls installed flowers and gifts as incentives to ‘urfi marriage which leads the bride to a small, dark and humid room, in which she is isolated and neglected. In the room the students exhibited a ‘urfi marriage contract with the bride birth certificate.
 

 

 

  
14- “DEPRIVED FROM CELEBRATION”
 


This piece enlightens about the situation of Palestinian children who are being deprived of celebration because of the political and financial situation. The dolls in this piece can not reach the gifts inside the closet.

 

 
 

 

  
15- “WOMEN’S RIGHTS”
 


This piece criticizes married women’s situation in our community, as most of them hang their university graduate certificates on the kitchen walls and become housewives.
 

 

 

  
16- “ELEVEN YEARS OF WORK”


This piece criticizes our educational system; as eleven years of hard work in school are all dependent on the “Tawjeehy” - the General Secondary Examination. No matter how hard students work or intelligent they are in their school life, the final Tawjeehy decides their future. To symbolize this the students lit eleven candles but left the twelfth and largest candle unlit. An empty Tawjeehy certificate lays beside the twelfth candle.
 
 

 

  
17- “OUT OF PLACE”
 


This piece is a performance art piece. The student feels out of place as she can not cope with her surrounding community and school mates. She symbolized her isolated situation by placing a walkman on her head while sitting to the side and ignoring anyone who tried to talk to her at the opening day exhibition.