RAEDA SAADEH

THE WISHES TREE

The artist stands in social space wearing a white robe with a wide skirt. Passers-by are invited to write their wishes on strips of coloured fabric and throw them on the dress. After some time, the dress begins to look like a flower-full meadow. According to Saadeh, “In Turkey, the wish tree is for lovers; they visit the tree and tie a piece of cloth on its branches. By doing this, they believe that their wishes will come true…. I come from Jerusalem, which belongs to the Holy Land. So, I wanted to explore the world and collect wishes from each country, and then––I don’t know when exactly–– the tree with those wishes from every corner of the world will be in Jerusalem next to all its holy sites.

Raeda Saadeh (Palestine) was born in Umm al-Fahm in 1977. She received her BFA and MFA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. She won the first Young Artist of the Year Award organised by the A.M. Qattan Foundation in 2000. Her work focuses on photography, performance and video, where Saadeh uses her body as the core subject of most of her works. Living in Jerusalem, Saadeh has exhibited her work extensively internationally, including at the European Parliament, GEMAK Museum, The Hague, HKW in Berlin, Sydney Biennale, Sharjah Biennale, as well as at multiple exhibitions in Austria, France, Denmark, etc. In 2015, Al-Monitor considered her one of the fifty personalities shaping Middle Eastern culture. Her work features in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Fonds régional d’art contemporain de Lorraine, Metz, France, and Magasin – Centre national d’art contemporain de Grenoble, France.

Proposed by Mahmoud Darwish Chair / BOZAR in Partnership with TROUBLES#11 & Studio THOR.

At the Music Kiosk in the Parc Josaphat (on the side of the Allée des Azalées, between the Rue Fontaine d’Amour and the Rue des Pâquerettes)
This performance takes place in a public space and is free, therefore there’s no need to book or buy a ticket.