Picasso in Palestine

Artist Khaled Hourani spent two years completing his project to exhibit a work by Pablo Picasso in Ramallah for the first time in history. The film – presented at Documenta 13 (Kassel 2012) and an integral part of the project – tells the story of the journey taken by the painting “Buste de Femme” (1943), from the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven to the spaces of the International Academy of Art Palestine and back, passing through the many bureaucratic complications and logistical difficulties faced by the show’s organizers. The show was inaugurated before the public in June 2011. The final conversation between Hourani, philosopher Slavoj Žižek and the Van Abbemuseum’s curator, Remco de Blaaij, involves the event and the multiple reflections it elicits.