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Here Music and Literature Were Dominant (Palestinian Art, from 1850 to the Present, E 2009)

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Here Music and Literature Were Dominant (Palestinian Art, from 1850 to the Present, E 2009) 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, Palestinian art 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.
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