Julieta Maria is a Colombian-Canadian artist who studied video and interactive media at York University, and whose art has been exhibited in Canada and abroad. Lisa Ross-Rizikov is a photographer who studied political science at the University of Waterloo and apprenticed as a midwife in El Paso, Texas. ‘Semites,’ their collective project for the McCleave suitcase will be a book of digital photo montages that explore their collective Palestinian and Jewish identity. Mixing old family photos to create ‘family’ groupings of people who never met, ‘Semites’ will comment on the shared roots of the groups participating in the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the implications that this has for identification with those cultural traditions in a Canadian context.

Left to right:

Grandmas, Collage and Grandfathers.
Lisa Ross-Rizikov and Julieta Maria (2005).