The first time artist and filmmaker Isabel Rocamora visited Jerusalem, she was spellbound by the prayers she heard as she walked through the Jewish, Muslim and Christian quarters of the city.
“There’s this real sense of fervour, of prayer, of the connection with the beyond, with God. And then you open your eyes, there’s a separation wall, there’s flags, there’s checkpoints and there’s fear on all sides. I thought to myself, ‘What a shame, what an irony,’” Rocamora said.
Her walk was the inspiration for Faith, a 22-minute installation film that looks for common ground among the three major religions in Jerusalem. Faith is premiering as part of Rocamora’s first Canadian solo exhibition, Troubled Histories, Ecstatic Solitudes, at Toronto’s Koffler Gallery until Nov. 29.
In the film, an Orthodox Jew, a Sunni Muslim and a Greek Orthodox Christian say their morning prayers in the Judean Desert, each one shown side by side on separate screens. The men pray, sometimes simultaneously, in settings that are connected to their religions. The Jew, Michael Cohen, prays in the Kumran Valley, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found; the Christian, Rev. Issa Taljieh, prays in the Wadi Qelt, where one of the ancient monasteries was built, and the Muslim, Feras Kazaz, the Qur’an reader at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque, worships at Nebi Musa, a Muslim holy site dedicated to Moses. Rev. Taljieh, a Palestinian, prays in Arabic. “He’s a bridge” between the Jew and the Muslim, Rocamora said.
She said the three men were happy with the principle of praying beside other religions. Rocamora chose settings without buildings, without “constructed history,” she said, so that “we’re able to feel the religious rituals more directly.”
Commenting on the similarities and differences between the worshippers, she added that when you observe the men praying, you realize how similar some of their prayer is and how distinct some of it is. “The similarity invites the viewer to think of these men as brothers and as human beings,” she said.
Rocamora said that Faith poses the question: what would be possible if dialogue between people in conflict in the Middle East took place on a spiritual level? “Of course, priorities would have to change,” she reflected. “They would not have to be financial, economic or territorial. They would have to be approached from the angle of spirituality.”
Rocamora, who comes from a Roman Catholic background, described herself as a believer who has “a strong spirituality” but isn’t religious.
Along with Faith, Rocamora’s exhibit at the Koffler includes Portrait in Time and Gesture, a single-screen film that examines the transformation of the self’s core over the course of an individual’s history; Horizon of Exile, a dual-screen film about female identity, and Body of War, a single-channel film that reflects on the transformation of man into soldier.
Body of War was exhibited at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art in 2012 and originally brought the Edinburgh-based Rocamora to Jerusalem. For the 20-minute film, released in 2010, she interviewed soldiers and ex-soldiers who can be heard speaking in the work set on the Normandy beaches. “What interested me was the ways different wars engage the human being,” she said.
Body of War includes footage of a fight, actually a sequence of moves from krav maga, a self-defence system developed for the Israeli military, between two soldiers. Then the action is slowed down and you’re able to perceive “the humanity and care inside the gesture of violence,” Rocamora said. At one point, one of the soldiers bites the other and “with slowing down, it becomes a kiss.”
Rocamora installation films have been exhibited at museums and galleries around the world. “My works are between fiction and documentary,” she said. Some of them, like Faith, are multi-channel. “Several screens,” she reflected, “allow for an immersive feel as well as discussion.”
For more information about Rocamora and her Toronto exhibit, visit http://kofflerarts.org and www.isabelrocamora.org.
