Local Art Center Launches the First Digital Platform for Palestinian Visual Arts

The Palestinian Art Court—al-Hoash, a Jerusalem-based NGO that specializes in visual arts, has announced the publication of the online archive Yura—Palestinian Visual Art Resources Program.

Launched in December 2021, Yura is the first digital platform for Palestinian visual arts. It offers more than 500 items including pamphlets, catalogs, invitations, and posters about art. It also includes a collection of books and brochures about art that can be read online. It can be accessed through the al-Hoash website.

Created for an Arabic-speaking audience, Yura is described on the website as a “knowledge resource for viewing and researching,” which serves as an “open interactive platform for knowledge production, critical and research contributions, as well as discussions related to Palestinian visual arts.” Anyone who is interested in getting better acquainted with Palestinian visual arts can browse through the digital platform, which primarily offers materials produced from the late 1970s to 2002 and contains the archival material of more than 300 Palestinian artists. There are plans to also keep updating the platform with new and old resources.

This valuable resource not only grants access to visual arts archives but also makes it possible for viewers to draw a clearer, more nuanced picture of Palestinian social and art history. It also opens the space for learning, assessing, producing, and reproducing knowledge about Palestinian art.

The Yura platform is based on the initial archive of al-Wasiti, an art center in Jerusalem that was established in 1996 by four leading Palestinian artists: Sliman Mansour, Tayseer Barakat, Nabil Anani, and Vera Tamari. Development of the platform was made possible with support from a grant from the A. M. Qattan Foundation’s Visual Arts: A Flourishing Field project, which is supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).