Dina Mimi is a visual artist born in 1994 in Jerusalem where she lives and works. Her practice is multifaceted and uses video, sound, performance, and text. Dina has been researching issues and subjects regarding the body and death in the public sphere, and notions of visibility and invisibility in the relation of archaeology to the object, and the museum to death. She has also been researching protest as a performance. Recently, for her MFA thesis, she examined the role of the body-force in public space in Palestine. She emphasises that when the body settles to perform the right to exist becomes non-negotiable. Dina obtained her Bachelor’s degree from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem in 2016, and her MFA degree in art in the public sphere from ECAV (École cantonal d’art du Valais) in Switzerland in 2018. During her studies, Dina has participated in many exhibitions and events in cities around the world, including Jerusalem, Sion, Sierre, Arnhem, Amman, Biella, Boston, Dro, Paris, Ramallah, Saint-Denis.
Dina’s performance, Grinding the Wind, navigates the missing parts of the story of her great-grandfather, who underwent medical testing and heart surgery at the Israeli military hospital Tel Hashomer in 1969. She went on a journey into archives, oral histories, dreams, and books. As she explains, “Like a surgeon who has wet dreams of inserting a finger into a heart during surgery, my research around the performative aspects of open-heart surgery is also motivated by desire. The heart of my great-grandfather, sealed behind more than one hundred stitches from his chest to his waist, was reduced to ashes as his final gesture of self-immolation.” Facing the mystery of this now inaccessible “archive,” for this new project the artist probes for clues to understand his descent into silence and protest, and ultimately into death.
Dina’s performance was presented at Alkantara festival in November 2020 and Kunstenfestivaldesarts in May 2021.