The video features Ashery dressed-up both as an Arab man and an orthodox Jewish man. The two characters are bound in their fixation on a drawing of Jerusalem. This is part of Ashery’s queer exploration of her Jewish heritage as a 7th generation Jew born in Jerusalem ( the Muslim quarter in the Old City) on one side of the family and a 3rd generation  Eastern European Jew born into an orthodox Jewish family in Jerusalem, or what she calls a Palestinian Jew.

Links/Downloads:

Additional project information: Oh Jerusalem is included on the Live Art Development Agency’s on-demand DVD of Ashery’s work

Essay: Roberta Mock, ‘Oreet Ashery’s Site-Specific Corporeal Turns’, in Dancing with Men, Live Art Development Agency, 2009

Essay: Chirstinn Whyte, ‘What If… Festival 2010 Catalogue Essay’, Independent Dance and Artsadmin, 2010

Interview: Julia Weiner, ‘The fishy case of Whitstable’s cross-dressing false messiah’, The JC, June 2008

Review: Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past and the Institute of Historical Research, ‘Bound exhibition, Open Eye Gallery Liverpool’, 1807 Commemorated: the abolition of the slave trade, 2007

Review: Barry Schwabsky, ‘Oreet Ashery DVD’, MAP, Spring 2008

Additional project information: Beyond Necessity at ]performance s p a c e[