Palestinian art

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Palestinian art is a term used to refer to paintings, posters, installation art and other visual media produced by Palestinian artists.

While the term has also been used to refer to ancient art produced in the geographical region of Palestine, in its modern usage it generally refers to work of contemporary Palestinian artists.

Similar to the structure of Palestinian society, the Palestinian art field extends over four main geographic centers: the West Bank and Gaza Strip; Israel; the Palestinian diaspora in the Arab world; and the Palestinian diaspora in Europe and the United States.^[1]

Contemporary Palestinian art finds its roots in folk art and traditional Christian and Islamic painting popular in Palestine over the ages. After the Nakba of 1948, nationalistic themes have predominated as Palestinian artists use diverse media to express and explore their connection to identity and land.^[2]

Themes

Place

Palestinian artist and art historian Kamal Boullata describes "place" as one of the major thematic components of Palestinian art throughout its history. Proximity and distance from the historical Palestinian homeland and the relationship between the artist and his current place of residence is the key element moving Palestinian art. For example, in art produced during the first decades following 1948, works created by Palestinian artists living in places within the region of their country of birth with largely figurative, whereas those created by artist living furthest from it were largely abstract.^[3] This reflects how the idea of a Palestinian homeland is more abstract to the distant exile or refugee and more figurative or concrete for the artist still dwelling there or nearby.

Before 1948, Jerusalem occupied was the key place explored by Palestinian artists reflecting its spiritual and cultural importance to the Palestinian polity. ^[4] However, after 1948, the dispersal of Palestinians, large scale ethnic cleansing from their homeland, and new conception of identity changed the idea of place so that there was no central hub of Palestinian art.

After 1948, memory of place and distance from homeland became a central theme in Palestinian art. ^[5] Even among Palestinian artist who were born and raised in Israel explored their own alienation of growing up as foreigners within the geographical land of their ancestors. Each sought to explore the question of cultural memory and articulate his or her sense of belonging to the same homeland and to a common culture. ^[6]

Politics

Palestinian art - from the early religious paintings of the 19th century to completely abstract works created today also tend to explore a common focus on the idea of resistance and the political backdrop of the Palestinian issue. The Palestinian identity itself is often dismissed by Zionist groups as being indistinct from Arab or Islamic identity thus the act of making art itself and claiming identity is at times a form of protest ^[7] Even during the colonialism, struggle with Ottoman or British forces played a key role in Palestinian art ^[8] One of the earliest artist to add a political dimension to his works was Nicola Saig (1863-1942). While most of the art at the time tended to explore religious themes and non-controversial issues (so as to not offend conservative patrons or ire the British authorities00 Saig managed to give his works a striking political dimension. For instance, his work Caliph Umar at Jerusalem Gates c. 1920 seems to just recount a popular religious legend about the Caliph Umar bloodlessly taking over Jerusalem and ushering centuries of peace between the local Christian and Jewish populations. However, upon closer look, the subject matter and the Christ-like stature given to the Caliph in the painting jab at what many Palestinians saw as divisive policies of the British during the Mandate Period which attempted to create friction between Muslims and Christian Arabs. ^[9]

After 1948, politics became a lot more blatant in Palestinian art. Beginning with Ismail Shammout, Naji al-ali, Mustafa al-Hallaj and Paul Guiragossian directly tackled the painful memories of the Nabka with works showing massacres, refugees, and clear political themes. Others such as Sophia Halaby, Ibrahim Ghannam, and Juliana Seraphim focused more subtly on questions of identity including Palestinian cultural traditions, physical geography, and (especially case of Juliana Seraphim and others, surrealistic look at memories of childhood reverie. ^[10]

Symbolism

Palestinian art employs a number of key iconic symbols that reflect the cultural and political dimensions of art. For instance, the political issue of the Right of Return is often symbolized by keys and doors as is in Naj al'Ali's political cartoons. Likewise the Cactus Tree plays a prominent symbolic role in Palestinian art representing national dispossession.

Cactus in Palestinian Art

The Cactus Tree Arabic: الصبار‎ has been a controversial and loaded subject in Palestinian art ever since the birth of Israel. Zionist settlers raised the indigenous plant to the status of a national symbol which came to symbolize their attachment to the land, while Palestinians saw it as an incarnation of their national dispossession (see, for example, the Arabic version of Sahar Khalifa's Wild Thorns, the Arabic title of which translates literally as Cactus). Both Israeli and Palestinian artist helped to inform and shape the Cactus Tree as a symbolic artistic symbol for the region. The earliest photographs of Palestine from the 19th and 20th century show cactus hedges dotting the landscape . The plant served the practical function to designate territorial borders in peasant villages. In summer, the prickly pear was a common fruit eaten by people in the region. During the 1920s, the thorny tree was the main element most Jewish settlers from Europe used to represent their new exotic home and eventually became incorporated as a major symbol of Israeli identity. ^[11]

Nicolas Saig, one of the earliest Palestinian artists to break from the Christian icon tradition, painted works of the prickly pear cactus to break into secular art by capturing one of the most common pleasures of the era. The prickily pear still lives served as some of the most important early secular works of the period ^[12]. The cactus also had become a symbol of Palestinian defiance and sumud. Villagers had already taken the symbol and incorporated it into a dance song protesting the 1917 Balfour Declaration with the phrase "Ya'ayn kuni subbara - O eye, be a cactus tree!". From that point on artist, especially 'Asim Abu Shaqra, took the symbol of the cactus as a representation of Palestinian sumud and sabr or perseverance against dispossession by the Israeli state and as a metaphor for the connection of Palestinians to the land.

Historical Overview

Pre 1948

Most Palestinian artists during this time were self-taught, painting landscapes and religious scenes in imitation of the European style, but overall the discipline was not very developed and art exhibitions were almost unheard of. Notable artists of this era include Khalil Halaby, Nahil Bishara, Sophie Halaby and Faddoul Odeh. Sophie Halaby was an exception, in that she was educated in France where she lived and worked for years. Jamal Badran (1909–1999) was a leading artist in the Islamic style.^[13]

Post 1948

The contemporary Palestinian art field has been characterized by Tal Ben Zvi as consisting of three major elements:

• Palestinian artists residing in four separate geographical territories who sustain a differentiated national cultural field despite the geographic differences;
• The absence of 'Palestinian' institutions of art studies and training throughout the world, including the Palestinian Authority;
• The absence of a historical museum infrastructure.

These characteristics lead Zvi to conclude that unlike sovereign nation-states where the art field is based on "national borders, national museums and institutes of learning, the Palestinian art field is based chiefly on artists operating within the frame of a Palestinian identity."^[1]

Palestinian artists in Israel

Abed Abdi, born in 1942 in Haifa, is a pioneer in the Arab Israeli art movement. Hisham Zreiq, Ahlam Shibli, Sami Bukhari, Reida Adon, Ashraf Fawakhry, Ahlam Jomah, Jumana Emil Abboud, and Anisa Ashkar are Palestinian artists - most of whom are graduates from art schools in Israel and form part of an entire generation of Palestinians, citizens of Israel born after 1967.^[1] The issue of identity for Palestinian citizens of Israel is a key subject of importance to the artwork produced. It is an identity described by Azmi Bishara thus:

From both the historical and theoretical perspectives, the Arabs in Israel are part of the Palestinian Arab people. Their definition as 'Israeli Arabs' was formed concurrent with the emergence of the issue of the Palestinian refugees, and the establishment of the State of Israel on the ruins of the Palestinian people. Thus, the point of departure from which the history of the Palestinians in Israel is written is the very point in which the history of the Palestinians outside Israel was created. One cannot point at a nationality or national group called 'Israeli Arabs' or 'the Arabs of Israel'.^[1]

Ben Zvi suggests that this definition pinpoints the dialectic underpinning the identity of this group of artists who are identified "on the one hand, as part of a broad Palestinian cultural system, and on the other — in a differentiated manner — as the Palestinian minority in Israel."^[1]

Palestinian artists in Israel face a number of challenges. Art institutions in Israel, for example, are attended by a maximum of three Palestinian students per year.^[1] Palestinian artists are forced to develop their artistic modes of expression in Hebrew, rather than their mother tongue of Arabic. The artists' Arab or Palestinian culture is not part of the curricula, and is effectively excluded, since the cultural and artistic context is a Western and Israeli one.^[1] Further, the Israeli art field as a national field generally perceives the Arab Palestinian artist as foreign to the local culture, and "ultimately prevents his representation as an immanent part of the field."^[1]

Palestinian artists in the Arab world

Originating from the Palestinian culture that crystallized in the refugee camps mainly in Lebanon and Jordan, Palestinian artists in the Arab world were among the first to put forward a vision of Palestinian contemporary art.^[1] As the Palestinian Authority became more central to Palestinian nationalism, their number and influence in the Palestinian art field has decreased, and diasporic Palestinian artists in Europe and the United States, have become increasingly prominent.^[1]

One such artist whose works were exhibited in the Made in Palestine exhibit that toured the United States in 2005 is Mustafa Al-Hallaj.^[14]

Born in what is now Israel, Al-Hallaj is known throughout the Arab world, where he has been described as "Syria's most famous artist" and an "icon of contemporary Arab graphic arts."^[14] Al Hallaj died in 2002 in a fire at his home while trying to save his artwork but this effort which cost him his life, meant that some of his work has survived.^[14]

In Self-Portrait as God, the Devil, and Man, Al-Hallaj uses rows of overlapping images and intricate etchings that took 10 years to complete to present "an epic retelling of the history of Palestinians from the 11th century B.C. to the present."^[14]

Collections

The Palestinian Art Court – Al Hoash, was founded in 2004, and opened its first gallery in East Jerusalem in 2005.^[15] Al Hoash has exhibited works of, among others, Sophie Halaby, Hassan Hourani, Vera Tamari and Suleiman Mansour.^[16]

Gallery

• 

  Nasr Abdel Aziz Eleyan: Palestinian woman resting

• 

  Arabisque Mosaic

• 

  Abed Abdi: The Wall

Notable artists

• Abed Abdi
• Naji Al-Ali
• Kamal Boullata
• Nasr Abdel Aziz Eleyan
• Ibrahim Ghannam
• Mustafa Al-Hallaj
• Hasan Hourani
• Mona Hatoum
• Emily Jacir
• Sari Ibrahim Khoury
• Bissan Rafe
• Sliman Mansour
• Ismail Shammout
• Sharif Waked
• Hisham Zreiq

References

Hani Amra Taysir Batniji

Further reading

• Boullata, Kamal (2009): Palestinian Art: From 1850 to the Present ISBN 0-86356-648-0
• The Palestine poster archive  : http://palestineposterproject.org/

External links

• Palestinian Performing Arts: News and Reviews at IMEU.net
• Palestinian Visual Arts: News and Reviews at IMEU.net
• Hagar Art Galley
• Palestinian Art at Palestine-art.com
• Palestinian Art Court at Al Hoash Gallery, an independent non-profit organization, officially registered in 2004 to form a core for a future Palestinian National gallery in Jerusalem.
• The Al Jisser group

See Also

• Art of the Arab-Israeli Conflict