“Two white donkeys dyed with black stripes delighted Palestinian kids at a small Gaza zoo who had never seen a zebra in the flesh…” — (Reuters, 8 October 2009)
ZOO, or the letter Z, just after Zionism, was a research and exhibition project first presented at Bureau Europa in Maastricht from 3 March to 10 June 2012, commissioned by Guus Beumer and researched and designed by FAST: Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory, to raise awareness of the ongoing violence in Gaza.
The project focuses on the role of architecture in times of conflict, showing how it can be both a constructive and a destructive force. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict demonstrates time and again how architecture, from the landscape to the settlements, is used both as a political lever and as a strategy of war.
The exhibition begins on page 437 of Atlas of the Conflict, Israel-Palestine by Malkit Shoshan. The book traces the processes and mechanisms that have shaped Israel-Palestine over the past century through hundreds of detailed maps, complemented by a lexicon.
Under the letter Z, two seemingly unrelated terms appear: Zionism and Zoo. The first is the ideological movement that led to the establishment of a Jewish homeland and a modernist nation-state. The second is a small zoo in Gaza City struggling to survive.
Together, these terms inspired an exploration of the ideas and associations conjured by a single image: a white donkey, tethered with a rope and striped with beige masking tape, transformed into a zebra by a Palestinian zookeeper. The zookeeper’s aim was to offer his community a brief escape into normality, in this case, a visit to the zoo as a space for everyday leisure.
The exhibition explores these themes within the context of the Gaza Strip and traces them back to the Age of Reason, the epoch of the classification of nations and animals. At its center is an installation of a hard cage that slowly transforms into a house, then into a soft, domestic, macramé-made enclosure. It is home to three Belgian donkeys, seven large rats running through tunnels along the walls, and pigeons. The gallery windows are covered with new lexical terms, revealing a reality of classification gone wrong.
The exhibition also includes an archive, an oasis projection, a series of videos, embroidery work, and a publication featuring a lexicon and four essays. Shoshan’s essay reflects on Zionism and the zoo, tracing both back to the Age of Reason and its classification of nations and animals. Hancock, an architect and former zoo director, examines the phenomenon of the zoo and concludes that the institution cannot adequately answer the ethical questions it raises. Sara Roy, a political economist and scholar at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies whose work focuses on Gaza’s economy, paints a poignant picture of the harsh living conditions there. Edo Amin, an artist, cartoonist, journalist, and activist, describes how imagination and fantasy, including the conjuring of a donkey into a zebra, become powerful tools for survival under systematic oppression.
Zoo publication