T H IDENTIITY R D T H IDENTIITY R D

cover The Lost Horizon Michael Halak Oil paint on wood, 2016

F IN THE WAKE OF THE STUDY OF modern Arab culture and the development of visual arts in the Middle East, is being (re) discovered and given back its legitimacy as a full-fledged culture. Recording Palestinian art history is O complicated by the relative lack of written materials, a consequence of Middle Eastern culture being primarily oral in expression. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has further complicated the matter, politically tainting the writing of Palestinian art history. This subject has been wonderfully analysed by Kamal Boullata, who gives great insight of the construction of Palestinian culture and identity before the Nakba R of 1948, and the evolution which followed, as well as the emergence of visual arts as a recognised form of art in a region where music and literature were dominant (Palestinian art, from 1850 to the Present, E 2009). The majority of native Palestinians were dispersed, uprooted or exiled after the Nakba of 1948; as a result, their common history was fragmented between Al Dakhel Palestinians and the diaspora. Those who stayed--or could return home--had to grow up in a system where their culture and immediate W past was erased. Their cultural education was unique in the region, reflecting the influences from western and eastern Europe of the newly emigrated people. This slowly changed after the 1970s, when the second generation started to claim their roots post-Nakba and question their unequal status O in society. In parallel, artists such as Abed Abdi and Asad Azi, were working on the reconstruction of a local Palestinian collective memory. As a consequence, the identity of Al Dakhel artists is suspended between citizenship, Israeli education, occidental influences, belonging to Palestinian culture and a strong R attachment to their land. Questions related to displacement, belonging, native culture and fragmentation recur in the work of Al Dakhel artists. By addressing these personal and highly specific questions in a complex society, the artists IDENTITY touch upon more universal questions: who are we, and how does identity evolve when challenged? ABED ABDI has been promoting Palestinian culture, intercultural exchange and peace through art for more than three decades. From the building of monuments honouring Palestinian people, to the circulation of prints depicting the life and struggle of Palestinian refugees, along with other projects, he has helped construct a new Palestinian identity in his homeland. Deeply influenced by his art education in Eastern Germany, Abdi is also one of the first artists to integrate western influences and techniques within his work. His paintings occupy the middle ground between figuration and abstraction, and reflect his political and social convictions. As he explains, “art must be committed and play a role.”.

The works by Abdi in this exhibition feature use of mixed media, culturally charged iconography, and themes related to his experience as a refugee, including spirituality, Palestinian culture and women. Abdi first used everyday life materials while studying in Germany. He recalls that the primary reason was a pragmatic one: there wasn’t much available to make art. In the 1990s, fragments of jute bags, carpets, jewels, glass, and other materials became recurrent in his works, used as a way to tell stories of broken lives. The jute bag is omnipresent: the UNRAWA distributes them in refugee camps. Resources being scarce, the bags are often recycled, becoming carpets, tents, and other everyday objects. Seen from this perspective, they are a symbol for the tragedy of refugees in Abdi’s works.

ASAD AZI Has also contributed to the development of Palestinian culture in many ways, including though the creation of the group REGA, or Moment. Blending cultural and historical references, media and techniques, Azi’s intricate works reflect a search for his own identity, as well as that of his community. Azi continued where Picasso and Matisse left art. While Matisse embraced the East and Picasso the South (Africa), Azi chose to expand the range of humanity by allying the West to his own culture. The result is a complex and intense body of work that blends references, media and techniques, where every line and shape has meaning. In his intricate, richly coloured and multi-layered works, Azi investigates the mundane and the dramatic, the secular and the sacred. Using traces from the past, like photographs and objects, the artist reveals the forgotten history of people and places.

The works presented in this exhibition span from the 1990s to today. Azi’s works are sometimes presented in pairs, regardless of their date of creation. The works dialogue with one another, addressing questions and references, pointing the viewer to the multiple layers and references dear to Azi. While initially they have a pleasant, almost decorative appearance / quality, the artist in fact juxtaposes Middle Eastern and European references and patterns to tell us nuanced, significant stories that ultimately relate to universal issues: identity, love, death, spirituality. IBRAHIM NUBANI was a student of Abed Abdi. Having endured the constant constraints of Israeli NASRIN ABU BAKER Is one of two female artists in this exhibition She represents a growing segment of control from 1948 onward, Nubani suffered from an identity crisis and was ultimately diagnosed with the Al Dakhel artist community: like the new generation of artists, Abu Baker works across media, from schizophrenia in 1988, during the first intifada. Nubani moved to Jenin during the second Intifada and video, installations, to painting. Abu Baker combines poetry, subtlety, rebellion and feminism in a unique survived the Israeli occupation forces’ invasion and destruction of the Jenin refugee camp. The Jenin way to address major themes: the status of the Palestinian citizen living in Israel, and the position of experience seared him in particular, and deeply affected his art. Ayelet Zohar studied the tremendous women in Arab societies. She frequently mixes cultural symbols, as well as Middle Eastern and Western changes that Nubani’s painting has undergone from the 1980s and the period of his hospitalisation influences to make her point: what is at stake, in her works, are universal issues and imbalances. to today: from geometric, Modernist-type painting, gradually moving into his contemporary chaotic and saturated style of expression. She draws parallels between Nubani’s personal and psychological Abu Baker presents Ism Alam Muanath (A Feminine Name), a video that tells the story of the death of condition and the political events that affected him. The paintings selected for the exhibition show a woman. As the woman lies (dead?) in the foreground, young children sing the alphabet; their images a tension between a child-like innocence, where colours are bright and the energy is palpable, and merge into images of maturing children helping with housework. She uses visual metaphors to illustrate black shapes and lines that obstruct this dreamt reality. The eye is always watching us, an everpresent the fate of women in a conservative society, suggesting the only true escape may be death. Her work reminder of what reality feels like. Through his works, Nubani tells the story of his own personal trauma asks whether freedom actually exists. Abu Baker asserts, in her own poetic language, that while women and pain along with that of others who lived through 1948; indeed, his work echoes the narrative of play an essential and integral role in Palestinian Arab society, they remain stifled under the weight of every oppressed people. As he poignantly puts it: “I am a refugee in my own homeland.” masculine authority, and this continues, across generations.

MICHAEL HALAK Represents the second generation of artists, those born after 1967. In the footsteps SAMAH SHIHADI represents the third generation in this exhibition. With pencil and charcoal, she of the Western tradition of realist and illusory painting that goes back hundreds of years, Halak’s earlier addresses the daily personal and social challenges that women face, at home and beyond. Her exceptional works focus on classical subjects such as portraits, landscapes and still lives, with a contemporary twist. drawing skills reach another level of precision, subtlety and emotion. The illusion of reality as he represents it on canvas may be perfect, yet it carries a disturbing charge related to states of disruption and disintegration. For this exhibition, Shihadi chose first to work on the cactus, a well known symbol for Palestinians of their national dispossession: the plant that served the practical function to designate territorial His latest works, like the series presented for the first time in this exhibition, are at the frontier between borders in peasant villages became the only trace of destroyed villages. Shihadi chose to show it for hyper-realism and conceptualism. The nine wooden panels, laser-cut to give the illusion of torn what it is: a tree. In Cactus, she explores the daily life and family relationships in the scene, which is very cardboard, become the symbols of historical and personal events. Halak addresses the immediate reality carefully constructed, like an old master painting. The peaceful scene, where the family is gathered for that surrounds him: the cardboards are part of his life, both figuratively and objectively speaking. Halak the harvesting of the cactus trees, depicts simultaneously reality and an order found only in dreams. lives in a temporary place, in between. Due to personal changes, his life is in boxes. But the cardboard The second series, Unfocused-Ash, pushes the boundaries of drawing by capturing the essence of also symbolises a more disturbing reality: the feeling of being “put in a box”, of being categorised. Deeply movement. Considered a reflection of her own state of mind, Unfocused is above all a metaphor for rooted in his identity is the sense of not belonging, of being permanently in transition, as conveyed by the relationship between society and hell: never really here…never really there. this large installation. The underlying question that shapes Michael Halak’s work (as well as his life, being born into a Palestinian Christian family), concerns the connection between person and place. He relates THIRD IDENTITY is thus conceived as a journey through time that outlines common themes and this to themes of presence and absence, identification and dis-identification, witnessing and silencing, concerns such as memory, post colonialism, hybridity, minority, and both the absence and cross- belonging and estrangement, memory and imposed oblivion. This tension, that shapes both his life and fertilisation of cultures. It shows the richness and the diversity that flourished despite the traumas and his work, is palpable. “schizophrenic” living conditions, as one artist put it. It is the first exhibition of its kind in Kuwait or the Middle East. THIRD IDENTITY aims to shed light on Al Dakhel artists and position this group within the regional Arab culture, hopefully creating bridges and dialogues between the artists presented, their peers, and the Arab world. We are very thankful for the opportunity CAP has given us and their support throughout this process. Our gratitude also goes to George Al Aama, Amir Abdi and Salim Abu Jabal for making this exhibition possible.

Valerie Reinhold & Rula Alami

Rula Alami is a Palestinian-Lebanese art collector and curator, based in Beirut and involved with the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit. Her collection is accessible on kiyan-art.com and promotes Middle Eastern art. She invited Valerie Reinhold, an art curator and advisor based in Amsterdam and founder of redprint:dna (discover new art) to tell the story of the Al Dakhel artists. CREATING A NEW COLLECTIVE MEMORY 1948 marks a catastrophe for the Palestinian people. The state of Israel was established based on the Balfour declaration of 1947. The immediate result was the uprooting of more than 650,000 Palestinians.

Rafi Nets-Zehngut defines in The Israeli and Palestinian Collective Memories of their Conflict the subcategories of the collective memory: official (National Information Center, the IDF, the Ministry of Education, national television, and the National Archive); historical (research community); autobiographical (war veterans); cultural (newspapers and NGOs); and popular (society at large). The collective memory, within Israel, was almost entirely Zionist until the 1960s. It evolved in the 1970s, due to various factors enabling the rise of alternative views, and which led to the development of a Palestinian narrative and of a critical Zionist narrative.

A group of artists, among others Abed Abdi, understood the need for the establishment of a (new) Palestinian collective memory. Tal Ben Zvi, in Abed Abdi: “Wa Ma Nasina” (We Have Not Forgotten), argues that the formation of the national collective memory of Palestinians within Israel is closely connected to two of Abdi’s activities: firstly, his prints about the exodus, which were circulated widely through newspapers, books, posters,etc; secondly, the erection of “Land Day” monument, in 1976, accomplished together with Gershon Knispel . He explains these projects were influential in the construction of a Palestinian visual identity.

The images and texts presented belong to the archives of Abed Abdi and tell the story of reconstructing the Al Dakhel identity. (Photography by Gideon Gitai, Abed Abdi, Gershon Knispel, the Land Day monument in Sakhnin. Land Day Portfolio, 1978) A R T IDENTITYI S T S ABED ABDI Abed Abdi was born into a long standing family in 1942. In April 1948, Abed Abdi, his mother Khaiyrieh and siblings were uprooted from their home, while his father remained in Haifa. After three years of wandering between Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria, they were allowed back into Israel as part of the family reunification program. Abdi learned painting and sculpting at the workshops of Israeli art teachers Yaskil Avraham, Meirowitch Zvi, and sculptor Kafri Mordecai. In 1962 Abdi was accepted for membership in the Haifa branch of the Israeli Association of Painters and Sculptors, becoming its first Arab member, and held his first exhibition in . Abdi then pursued academic studies at the Fine Arts Academy in Dresden (Germany) with, among others, . His broad artistic range encompasses painting, graphic design, monuments and illustrations.

Abdi began as a figurative painter and later evolved towards abstraction: his works may seem at first calm, almost muted. The use of concrete and rough textures, mixed with fragments of everyday objects, conveys a strong view about his people and his culture, however. Abdi has been promoting Palestinian culture, intercultural exchange and peace through art for more than three decades. He believes that “the role of fine art is to show [the people who want to see reality as it is] the truth”. Abdi is an artist fully committed to testifying about Palestine and the greater Arab world. However, reducing his artistic body of work and identity to being Al Dakhel would be to wrongly diminish his importance: Abdi has absorbed and made his ”outside” influences his own. Educated in Germany and married to a Hungarian woman, Abdi places value on universal sentiments.

Abdi has been a pillar of the development and recognition of Al Dakhel contemporary art and of the creation of a new collective memory within his community through the building of memorial monuments and the circulation of prints through newspapers. In 1994, Abdi set up the IBDA association for deepening the dialogue between Arabs and Jews through Arts, and was one of the Founding Members of the Khalil el Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramahalla in 1998. He has received numerous awards and has exhibited extensively in Europe and in Israel.

WORKS ON SHOW

PRAYER 2007, mixed media and acrylic paint on canvas Abdi evolved towards abstraction in the refugees series, where he mixes materials linked to the camps. “Prayer” is made of carpets, necklaces, and UNRWA jute bags. The vertical lines guide our eyes towards the beads and carpet pieces at the top of the composition, while the earthy colours ground the diptych in the daily life of the camps. The painting evokes a spiritual path: prayer as a soothing alternative to reality. BRIDE, 1998, acrylic paint on canvas “Bride” belongs to the Figure and Portrait series where Abdi depicts the Palestinian people with a focus on refugees. This painting is characteristically his style: the lines structure the canvas and frame the head of the bride, who becomes an icon, She is wearing a flower crown and her face is barely sketched. It could be a joyful day. However the vertical lines of her robe leave us to wonder: is her wedlock a prison?

UNTITLED, 2014, mixed media and acrylic paint on canvas Abdi’s work has shifted towards greater abstraction in the past decade, and his political and social statements have become less explicit while remaining present. Recurring patterns include windows and carpets, which we both find in this composition. The torn jute bag, a symbol of refugee camps, is roughly stitched together, letting us see a black background. Is it a window on a grim reality or an attempt to pray, by making a praying carpet with the means available?

FORGIVE ME, 2014, mixed media and acrylic paint on canvas In 2014, a woman was stoned to death by ISIS and her father in Syria. She was told to be content and happy about her stoning, as it was ordered by Allah. She pleaded for her life and asked her father to forgive her. He replied by telling her not to call him “father”. He threw the last stone that killed her. Forgive me tells her story so that we remember her, to underscore that brutality is not the solution. It is a work about the father-daughter relationship and also abandonment. Did Abdi feel abandoned when he was forced to leave his father? Did it leave a permanent scar, hidden but so real?

UNTITLED, 2015, mixed media and acrylic paint on canvas Abdi is interested in the remains and the deconstruction of reality. Other recurring elements in his later compositions are fragments of cloth, foam, carpets, tents, bags, and other simple materials. The cloth once transformed into a habitat--a tent--returns to a flat and fragmented state in Abdi’s work. The artist outlines the fragility and fragmentation of living under a tent, as a nomad, wandering through temporary places and lacking a fixed land.

BOY, 2011, mixed media on canvas 1942 ,1941 ,1940… Years fly. The boy reaches out to someone we can’t see. He is hidden behind a barrier, made of UNRWA bags and ropes. The blue sea and the dark sky seal the image: the boy is departing, like Abdi who, after 1948, had to leave his father wander through refugee camps for three years.

ASAD AZI

Asad Azi was born in Shafa Amr in the Galilee, in 1955, in a Druze family. He studied Fine Arts at the University of Haifa and later in Tel Aviv as well as at the Beit Berl Academic College. Azi embraced poetry and sculpture in his early career: he published three books of poetry in the 1970s and created figurative sculptures influenced by the art of the Near East. After finishing his studies, he went to study in Carrara, Italy, and later to Nigeria.

The 1980s marked a big shift in Azi’s work, which has since focused solely on the medium of painting. He combines images and connections from the history of European art with folkloristic images taken from Druze society and Middle Eastern references to create intricate works where figurative painting tradition is mixed with abstraction and collage to investigate primarily the concept of (self-)identity and its many layers.

At the same time, Azi contributed to the development of culture though the creation of the group Rega (Moment) and the implementation of the first festival of the Center for the Palestinian Heritage in Taibe. He also represented his country in the Venice biennial in 1986. Azi is currently teaching art in various institutes and has been given numerous awards and prizes over the years. Azi has participated in more than 150 group and solo exhibitions in Haifa, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Germany, Italy, USA, Russia and Spain.

Azi’s work deals with universal themes as expressed through his personal stories, from the loss of his father to the history and identity of Al Dakhel. He advocates a humanistic and universal culture as, according to Azi, “there is no such thing as a local culture”. WORKS ON SHOW

CULT, 1993, mixed media and acrylic paint on canvas The colour in “Cult” is overwhelming: the red, symbol of passion and danger, exudes energy. The colour and flatness of the painting remind us of Matisse and “the red room”. Azi uses secular patterns: isolated on the canvas, they become art. Our gaze is drawn upwards, by the vertical stripes, made out of military ribbons, towards a handmade flower. The flower, handmade, cheap, belongs to the Palestinian folklore. The collage and use of simple objects is reminiscent of Duchamp and Picasso, who spoke about intellectual collages: Azi was a pioneer in this field, in the region. Every detail, juxtaposed, form an ensemble that looks like an altar: we silently look, are infused with the energy of the composition, and let the divine penetrate our souls.

HUNT, 2011, acrylic paint on canvas The stag has had many symbolic meanings through the different cultures and centuries, from protector of nature in ancient Middle Eastern cultures, to a symbol of purity in the Christian religion. The stag embodies fertility, death and rebirth. Azi’s painting reminds us of Flemish paintings, from Paul de Vos to Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck. Three dogs leap on the back of the stag, while one lies injured on the ground. Azi focuses on the instant of the kill. The frightened stag can’t escape. Caught between two realities, the stag is still in the colourful forest and yet almost disappearing: the right side of the painting, almost monochromatic, sketchy, partly painted, symbolises the “other world”. Azi suggests contemporary, submerged urges of pure violence that seem to dwell in us all. (Paul de Vos, Oil paint, 212 x 347 cm, Museum del Prado, courtesy Museum del Prado)

STILL LIFE, 1994, mixed media and acrylic paint on canvas What is art? Azi juxtaposes existing patterns with drawn ones, using in this case wallpaper, recycling existing materials with existing patterns, to create a peaceful yet dynamic still life. A blue shape seems to be falling: is it a bird or our interpretation of an abstract shape? The vase and stylised shapes become souvenirs of ancient still lives. TWO PIGEONS, 1994, mixed media and acrylic paint on canvas Pigeons have many different meanings, symbolising home and security in many cultures; they are also considered by some to be messengers between the living and the dead. Pigeons are a recurring theme in Azi’s paintings. For Azi, they are reminiscent of his childhood and even a reference to a mosaic he saw in the Arian baptistery in Ravenna. (Fountain of Life, Ravenna, Mauseleum of Galla Placidia, pictured below)

The soft looking painting is made of wood dust and has a rough texture. This ambivalence is echoed by the two birds: although made with a delicate lace, their shape is harshly cut in the canvas… And the peaceful scene is endangered by the presence of the dog at the bottom. The left vertical line evokes further ambivalence: does it symbolise a prison or transcendence?

CONQUEST, 2010, acrylic paint on paper A soldier is passing by a house, where an Arab woman stands at the door. The man carries a gun and looks furtively at the woman. It could be a simple, everyday scene, but the pose of the woman is unclear, while the gun looks like a manly symbol of military or even sexual conquest. The relationship is ambiguous but Azi gives us a key by painting a grid on top of the painting: there is no escape. IBRAHIM NUBANI

Ibrahim Nubani was born in Acre in 1961 and grew up in Maker, in the Galilee. He received his first painting lessons from the Palestinian artist Walid Qashash and later studied with Abed Abdi. In 1984, Nubani graduated from Bezalel Academy of Art & Design in Jerusalem and moved to Tel Aviv, where his work received great acclaim at local and international exhibitions. In 1986, at 25 years old, Nubani participated in the Venice Biennial.

He has since then exhibited at several Palestinian art centers, as well as regional and international museums in Germany, the US, United Arab Emirates, Jordan and France. Additionally he has had solo exhibitions at Tel Aviv Museum in 2004 and Al Hoash gallery in 2006.

A major shift happened to Nubani when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1988, during the first intifada. In her study about Nubani (The Paintings of Ibrahim Nubani: Camouflage, Schizophrenia and Ambivalence - Eight Fragments Theory, Culture & Society Vol. 28 issue 1, Jan. 2011), Ayelet Zohar described Nubani’s painting as “as the ultimate result of the long camouflage of his Arab identity, and the intensive course of assimilation into Jewish society. I interpret his schizophrenia as a signifier of the impossible split encompassed in Arab-Israeli-ness, and link it directly to the start of the first Intifada, Dec. 1988. The trajectory follows the transformation of his work from geometric structure into chaotic surfaces, foregrounds the eye images as the representation of castration, and his language as the doubleness of cultural history of Arabs and Jews in Palestine.”

In the early 1990s, Nubani moved back to Maker, where he currently lives and works. Ibrahim Nubani was born in 1961, at a time when the education and civil system of Israel had erased any reference or mention of Palestinian or Arab culture and history. He was raised as a Zionist, learning about Zionism, Hebrew, and Jewish customs. The intended goal was to eradicate any attachment to prior Palestinian references, to transform the whole community into Zionists. Nubani felt rejected: raised as “one of them,” he would feel cornered, if he did not comply with the system in power. The intifada and the impossibility of denying his identity as a Palestinian became unbearable, contributing to the materialisation of Nubani’s own clinically schizophrenic experience. His diagnosis as schizophrenic coincides with a significant change in style: his paintings became dramatic, saturated with colours and repetitive patterns.

In an interview with Ayelet Zohar (The Paintings of Ibrahim Nubani: Camouflage, Schizophrenia and Ambivalence – Eight Fragments, 2011) , Nubani says “from childhood, I was brought up by the education and civil systems of Israel as a Zionist (Jew) in a manner that completely denied and suppressed difference: we studied the history of Zionism, Hebrew literature, we went to the Kupat Holim clinic, and drank Tnuva milk. The Zionist project was all over the place, with no traces or signifiers of Palestinian/ Arab identity. The expectation from us, children and adults alike, was to identify with the Zionist state, which actually was the direct cause of the eradication of our previous lives as Palestinians (prior to 1948). This became an unbearable state of affairs, which I call ‘schizophrenic reality’. For me”, says Nubani, “this very reality is the materialisation of my own schizophrenic experience.”

Ayelet Zohar was the first to analyse the patterns used by Nubani. She noted that recurring images and icons served as “signifiers of his personal crisis and artistic development”. She links Nubani’s eyes/ ocelli images to Lacan’s discussion of ‘symbolic castration’ as the core of his personal becoming part of Israeli society and his collapse, the in-between desire to assimilate in the early stages of his life, and his current desire to fully live his life as a Palestinian. His paintings are colourful and then systematically covered with black lines and patterns, like a camouflage. Beside the eye, Nubani’s iconography include geometric patterns that obstruct parts of the canvas and house-like shapes, always black. Nubani takes refuge in his own paintings. The latest works (2016) are evolving towards abstract expressionism. Although the symbols, like the eye, are still visible, the colours are more vivid and the camouflage patterns gone: in some ways painting can be a cathartic process.

MICHAEL HALAK

Michael Halak was born in1975 in Fassuta village (Upper Galilee). After studying Fine Arts at Haifa University, Halak won a residence scholarship in 2005 to attend the Florence Academy of Art, Italy, in 2005. There, he would perfect his hyper-realist style. He graduated with a M.F.A at Haifa University in 2009.

Halak’s works moves along the frontier between hyper-realism and conceptualism. The illusion of reality represented on canvas may be seductively beautiful and perfect, but equally conveys feelings of disruption and disintegration. The perfectly constructed and executed works depicting landscapes, toys, and people are almost always slightly off: beautiful, almost real and yet they convey an awkward feeling, often impermanence, hybridity, entrapment, or categorisation. Michael Halak plays with our perception to make us feel what he feels, to experience his reality: a life in transition, in a place that is not really his.

Halak has exhibited extensively in museums (Tel-Aviv Museum of Art and Noga Gallery in Tel-Aviv and Haifa University Art Gallery, Haifa Museum, Herzelia Museum and Ramat Gan Museum) and galleries in Israel, Europe and the U.S.A. Halak has won several awards including the Israeli Ministry of Culture and sports for contemporary artists (twice) and the Rappaport prize for a young Israeli painter. He currently lives and works in Haifa. WORKS ON SHOW

THE LOST HORIZON, 9 laser-cut wooden panels, oil paint, 2016

Torn cardboards Like a house One soft blow and it may all crumble Like a wall It separates us from the others Like a box For this is our reality: Separated and categorised sound of the old woman mourning, a sound that provokes alertness and walking towards the skies. NASRIN ABU BAKER And the question remains open: ”Does she reach liberty or death after being awake?” Regardless of the interpretation of this film, the clear statement is the necessity of freeing women from traditional Nasrin Abu Baker was born in 1977 in the village of Zalafa, in Israel. She studied at the Faculty of Arts societal constraints. – Hamidrasha, at Beit Berl College and received a B.Ed. F.A. (a joint bachelor’s degree in education Courtesy Salim Abu Jabal and arts) in 2008.

The artist explores her own identity and roots through feminist representations. She combines a variety of media and Western references with Palestinian cultural symbols and concepts to address the notion of her identity and the role of women in Palestinian society. Abu Baker places the woman in a sociopolitical context usually absent in art. Women stand in the front and centre of her works, exemplifying strength and determination. Deeply influenced by German expressionism, she depicts the world she sees, from a feminist point of view, with vibrant colours and energy. Abu Baker works with locally gathered materials and attempts to create a dialogue between the local and the universal, mixing cultural symbols and peoples.

Abu Baker is currently living close to Jerusalem and working as a freelance artist and art teacher. She is also studying German to pursue her education and career in Germany. Her art works have exhibited in various local and international group exhibitions, in Italy, Germany, Belgium, Austria and U.S.A. Abu Baker has participated in several art residencies, including «Schir Residence Berlin», Germany, and Studio at «Quartier21», Austria.

WORK ON SHOW

ISM ALAM MUANATH (“A Feminine Name”) - Video art - 2013 Video art is a new field for Nasrin Abu Baker. She presents her view of the Arab woman using audio- visual symbolism. Her animation film “Ism Alam Muanath” (“A Feminine Name”) has its own rhythm, while revealing her artistic message which sides with women, the pillar of the Palestinian Arab society that remains stifled under the burden of masculine authority throughout the different generations. The place: an old Arab house that was abandoned by its residents. The story: the death of women in their lives since they learned the alphabets until they performed housework. In this film, the message exceeds the limits of the expected. It captures with high symbolism little girls in school uniform singing the alphabet for the words mom and dad, some girls washing their white dresses, that signify purity, men grounding meat with manual metal grinders, and an old lady singing a sad melody to mourn a woman who is lying down and is being at the center of events, as a witness who cannot see or hear. Narrating the story of the Arab women in Palestine, in addition to making choices about the place and characters make the film more than just a video art. The film becomes a statement of high sensibility, in which the sound of the alphabets merges with the sound of cutting meat and the sound of the silent body of the Arab woman that is made unconscious. She awakens only when she hears the SAMAH SHIHADI

Samah Shihadi (born in Sha`b, in 1987) is a Haifa-based artist and a graduate with a BA in art from Oranim College (2012) and an MFA from Haifa University (2015). Shihadi has painted for as long as she can remember and having spent seven years studying art, she has emerged as a fine talent who has mastered the art of draughtsmanship. Shihadi focuses on drawing, in a realistic style, evoking an illusion of a photograph. Her pencil and charcoal work is truly sublime, even if the subject matter can often be harrowing: she is profoundly interested in the daily personal and social challenges that women face--both at home and beyond. Her empathy and steadfastness are beautifully and sensitively articulated in her work. Shihadi has received numerous prizes and exhibited consistently in Israel and Palestine.

“I sometimes need to detach myself for strenuous moments.” (courtesy Ronit Eden)

WORKS ON SHOW

CACTUS, 150 x 210 cm, 2016, pencil and charcoal on paper

Shihadi is maturing: her exceptional drawing skills reach in this work yet another level of precision, subtlety and emotion. For this exhibition, Shihadi chose first to work on the cactus, a well known symbol of Palestine.The cactus is a well known symbol, for Palestinians, of their national dispossession: the plant that served the practical function to designate territorial borders in peasant villages became the only trace of destroyed villages. Shihadi chose to show it for what it is: a tree. In Cactus, she explores the daily life and family relationships in the scene, which is very carefully constructed, like an old master painting. The peaceful scene, where the family is gathered for the harvesting of the cactus trees, depicts simultaneously reality and an order found only in dreams.

UNFOCUSED-Ash 100 1 x 70 cm, charcoal and pencil on paper UNFOCUSED-Ash 2, charcoal and pencil on paper UNFOCUSED-Ash 3, charcoal and pencil on paper

The second series, Unfocused-Ash, pushes the boundaries of drawing by capturing the essence of movement. Considered a reflection of her own state of mind, Unfocused is above all a metaphor for the relationship between society and hell: never really here…never really there.

2017 THIRD IDENTITY

TIMELINE CACTUS - Samah Shihadi - 150x210 cm - drawing & charcoal on paper 2016 UNFOCUSED (1 to 3) - Samah Shihadi - 100x70 cm - drawing & charcoal on paper THE LOST HORIZON - Michael Halak - 9 panels - 70x50 cm - oil on wood birth Abed Abdi 1942 UNTITLED - Ibrahim Nubani - 130x110 cm - acrylic paint on canvas UNTITLED - Ibrahim Nubani - 129x123 cm - acrylic paint on canvas UNTITLED - Ibrahim Nubani - 116x105 cm - acrylic paint on canvas nakba 1948 UNTITLED - Abed Abdi - 100x79 cm - mixed media and acrylic paint on canvas 2015 Abed Abdi returns to Haifa 1951 UNTITLED - Ibrahim Nubani - 130x73 cm - acrylic paint on canvas UNTITLED - Ibrahim Nubani - 135x95 cm - acrylic paint on canvas

1955 birth Asad Azi UNTITLED - Abed Abdi - 101x75 cm - mixed media and acrylic 2014 paint on canvas 1961 birth Ibrahim Nubani FORGIVE ME - Abed Abdi - 101x60 cm - acrylic paint on paper

1967 Six-Day war A FEMININE NAME - Nasrin Abu Baker - video 2013

2010 CONQUEST - Asad Azi - 1975 birth Michael Halak 71x65 cm - acrylic paint on BOY - Abed Abdi - 80x110 cm - mixed media and canvas acrylic paint on canvas 2011 1976 erection Land Day monument HUNT - Asad Azi - 48x75 cm - acrylic paint on 2007 PRAYER - Abed Abdi - canvas 160x70 cm - mixed media and 1976 birth Nasrin Abu Baker acrylic paint on canvas

1986 Asad Azi and Ibrahim Nubani at the Venice biennial

BRIDE - Abed Abdi - 90x90 cm - acrylic paint on canvas 1998 1987 birth Samah Shihadi

1988 Jenin massacres

STILL LIFE - Asad Azi - 97x120 cm - mixed media and acrylic TWO PIGEONS - Asad Azi - 99x75 cm - mixed media and acrylic 1993 1994 paint on canvas paint on canvas CULT - Asad Azi - 83x120 cm - mixed media and acrylic paint on canvas © CONTEMPORARY ART PLATFORM, KUWAIT - 2017 capkuwait

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KUWAIT, INDUSTRIAL SHUWAIKH BLOCK2, ST.28, LIFE CENTER, MEZZANINE P.O.BOX 102 SAFAT, 13002, KUWAIT TEL: 00965 24925636, FAX: 24827993, [email protected]