Emily Jacir, stazione, 2009/2010 

stazione is the title of a public intervention conceived by Palestinian artist Emily Jacir for a collateral project of the 53rd Venice Biennale titled Palestine c/o Venice in 2009 but never realised. Jacir’s initial idea was to translate the names of each of the 24 vaporetti stops along route #1 of the water bus route into Arabic and to place the Arabic translations on all the stops next to their Italian counterparts. The piece was meant to illustrate cultural exchanges through history. The Arabic translations would have placed each floating platform in dialogue with the surrounding architecture and urban design, linking them with various elements of Venice’s shared heritage with the Arab world.
Shortly before the opening of the Biennial, however, the project was cancelled by city authorities without explanation despite an initial consent. Supposedly the vaporetto company received pressure from an outside source to shut it down for political reasons.
A map in Italian, Arabic and English of the number 1 route was distributed throughout the city containing a location map of the project, as well as the Vaporetto map translated into Arabic and a brief explanation of the background to the work. At the opening of Palestine c/o Venice event, the artist distributed the brochures to circumvent the censorship and make people think the work was in place but she was forbidden to include a text describing the cancellation within the exhibition. She was only permitted to include a note near the brochures stating that the project has been cancelled without further explanations.
In 2010, in occasion of her solo exhibition at Alberto Paola Gallery in Turin, Jacir exhibited the photoshopped images which were initially the proposal photos of the work together with copies of the map.