Location: Haifa, Israel
"Chic Point brings these locations together in a reflection on politics, power, aesthetics, the body, humiliation, surveillance, and chosen as opposed to forced nudity. The body of the Palestinian, today commonly understood by the Israeli state as a dangerous weapon, is brought to the viewer´s eye in the flesh." --VideoArt world.
“Through ironic reflections on power and politics, Waked overturns established aesthetic formations and ponders the absurd realities of political conflict.” Sharif Waked's work is part of the permanent collections of the Solomon Guggenheim-New York, the Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Création, the Sharjah Art Foundation, and the Israel Museum. One of the first and still strongest “pieces” of art I encountered is Sharif Waked’s Chic Point: Fashion for Israeli Checkpoints. Ironically, I was directed to his seven minute video installation (in the Israeli wing) while touring the European wing of the Israel Museum. Few Palestinian artists are represented in the museum as a whole and in the three gallery Israeli identity wing in particular . It is ironic that the Israel museum, a fairly liberal institution currently exhibiting Hasidim “A World Apart” (See portrait), would purchase and exhibit Waked’s scathing commentary on Israeli security.
I was fortunate to meet Waked on his home turf- in a Masada Street café in Haifa, a mixed Jewish and Arab city. Waked, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, had just completed work for an exhibit in Manchester, England. He has also exhibited at the Middle East, Europe, Australia and the U.S.A and has been described as the most accomplished Palestinian with an Israeli passport artist living in Israel today. All of the young artists I met knew and revered him.
Chic Point opens with a series of attractive young Arab men, walking a catwalk in outfits that all have something in common. Each young model has his back or stomach or chest revealed in a “cutting edge fashionable” way. You see their flesh through openings in in shirts, and the openings themselves are artistically designed. They take the form of zippers and collars. The viewer becomes entangled in the beauty of the men and the design.
You understand that a comment is being made, but not until the second half of the film, do you get the full impact and juxtaposition. Soon the models disappear. The tone and content change as photographs take the place of video. The 2000-2003 photographs are real depictions of Arab men at checkpoints in Gaza, Jenin, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Qalandiya, Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus. These pictures present normal men with normal physiques. They are not glamorous; some are overweight. All are being humiliated by being required to raise their shirts, so Israeli soldiers can check for explosives that might be strapped to their abdomens.
What I especially like about his work is how accessible it would be for students in the U.S. Chic Point's photography, models, juxtapositions, ironies, and meaning provide so much for a high school class to deconstruct. Given some background about the conflict, check points, and the second Intifada, I think students could learn a great deal, and in a fascinating manner, from the video. A lot has been written about this piece, but I think students could understand and make their own assessments just examining Chic Point. Topics such as politics, power, aesthetics, humiliation, and security make good fodder for conversation.