Miki Krastman
The Bedouin Visual Archive
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The Bedouin Visual Archive
Year:
2014-2018
Mediums:
Portfolio of 10 Prints
Collection:
IL COLLECTION

The Bedouin Visual Archive Project is aiming to use narrative and visual literacy to raise awareness to the rights violations of the Bedouin and give voice to their silenced histories and claims on the land. The Archive is an ambitious step in the Negev Coexistence Forum (NCF) Human Rights Campaign. The archive platform will be trilingual and one of a kind in terms of its contribution to activism, research, the art world and policymaking. The aim is to produce a comprehensive and user-friendly database of photographs, maps and stories that make public a history of the region that respects the experience of its Bedouin inhabitants. 

The Bedouin communities living in the Negev-Naqab today have a long and complex relationship with the region. They are formally Israeli citizens and a part of the broader Palestinian Arab minority who stayed within Green Line Israel after the establishment of the state in 1948. There are roughly 240,000 Bedouins living in the Naqab-Negev region of what is today southern Israel; 60% of Naqab-Negev Bedouin live in six state-designed towns and one city, while the rest live in 11 recognized villages and 35 unrecognized villages. The communities living in the unrecognized villages are resisting this state-sponsored policy of house demolition, forced relocation and land expropriation.