Ziara: Moroccan Common Wisdom : Muslims and Jews Share Moroccan Meta-Identity in a Liminal Artistic Space

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Abstract: Our article examines the art exhibition Ziara: Moroccan Common Wisdom that was part of the Fourth Jerusalem Biennale, held in 2019. In this article, we show how the creation of this liminal venue in the exhibition at the Jerusalem International YMCA afforded the artists from Morocco and Israel a safe space to express themselves critically about the religious, social, cultural, and national norms that prevail in their countries, and how the themes that engaged them at the exhibition reflect central theoretical themes in the analytical demarche that the betwixt-and-between state and the liminal situation offered at the exhibition. We also claim that by borrowing the term "Ziara" to denote a space of shared cultural meaning, the artists and the curator took advantage of the platform that the exhibition provided to send messages that may challenge the basic sociocultural assumptions of Moroccan Jews and Muslims alike. We show how they emphasized the idea that "betwixt-and-between," as a common Jewish–Muslim cultural space, may serve as a vessel that can accommodate their split identity, enable them to connect with multiple homelands, and to thereby challenge the borders and barriers that nationalism has erected among members of the Moroccan diaspora. Finally, it is our main argument that the works displayed at the exhibition in their artistic context tend to exemplify a radical stance of blurring of national distinctions between Jews and Muslims in the diasporic context; they may even reflect an attempt to redefine the way Moroccans define their "Moroccanness" and establish a Moroccan meta-identity in which the diasporic component is central.