The Artist Study Group of The Psychotherapy Service for People in the Arts presents Relational Public Art: Solidarity, Tourism, Witnessing and Transforming Spaces in Occupied Palestine and Israel with Susan Greene, PhD
Thursday, February 2, 2023, 1:30-3pm
An Online Presentation
Join us via zoom at:
https://wawhite.zoom.us/j/8180152948?pwd=cDkrUTlMSndQendyZzhnc054c0tpQT09
In this presentation, Dr. Greene will reflect on two community mural projects produced with Art Forces, an art/activism organization she founded and directs. The first project took place from 2004-2011 with the Aamer family, Palestinians who live in Mas’ha village in the West Bank. The Aamers live surrounded on four sides by the wall Israel has erected across the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Aamers invited Greene, international artists/activists, and Jewish Israeli solidarity activists to work with them to paint a mural on the 24-foot wall they see when looking out of their front door. The second ongoing project, entitled “I Witness Silwan,” is located in Silwan, East Jerusalem. Large-scale images of the eyes of local, national, and international leaders, artists, writers, philosophers, and more are being installed on the hillside, visible from miles away, including from Israeli tourist sites. Dr. Greene’s interrogation includes: In what ways have the murals changed or shifted the psychology of spaces; what is solidarity in this context of military occupation; how do the murals challenge dominant ideology and heritage tourism in East Jerusalem; and what are some of the dynamics of creativity and coping with trauma.
We look forward to an enriching study group discussion!
Susan Greene, Ph.D., is the director of US based Art Forces. She is an interdisciplinary artist and clinical psychologist. Her practice traverses cultural arenas including video, new media, public art and murals. Greene’s work focuses on the psychologies of space, intersections of trauma, creativity, memory, resilience and resistance. Specifically, she is concerned with the ways in which architecture and tourism reinforce and reimagine borders, migrations, environmental and racial justice and decolonization. She has a private practice in Bay Area, CA.
Frances V. Dillon, MSW and Eric Dammann, Ph.D.,
Artist Study Group Co-Directors
