Imaging Jerusalem
Jerusalem has occupied the imagination of people all over the world for centuries many of whom have created a plethora of representations of Jerusalem in literature, art and photography. In this context as Jerusalem is the Arab City of Culture for 2009 it is timely to look back at the representations created of the city by Palestinian artists who have been painting Jerusalem for the last 50 years.
Jerusalem was not only painted by Palestinians but by European travelers and pilgrims who visited the Holy Land particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Probably the most well-known Orientalist painter was David Roberts, who rarified the holy sites of Palestine and whose images are still sold in the Old City today. His paintings depicted Palestine as unchanged since the period of Christ. Many of the orientalist painters included Roberts, imaged the city through a predominantly biblical lens, which shaped their representation of it, and this is what distinguishes the work of Palestinians artists because their paintings show the lived experience of the city, their memories and aspirations which are on display in this exhibition.
Early artists such as Daoud Zalatimo and Sophie Halaby painted the city from their particular viewpoints. Zalatimo was fascinated like many others, with the decorative patterns on the architecture of the Haram al Sharif as well as the Islamic history of the city and the individuals who contributed to its development. Sophie Halaby in contrast spent years painting the surrounding landscape of the city. In her works, Jerusalem’s hills are portrayed in different moods, nearly always vacant of human presence, as it is the hues and contours of the land that she studied. Significantly, Halaby did not chose to portray grand panoramas as was the European tradition of imaging the Holy land, rather her paintings expressed a more intimate relationship to the land. At times one can discern the silhouettes of buildings in her paintings; however they are never glorified in her works but registered with a few simple brushstrokes.
For the next generation of artists, Jerusalem was a city, which they experienced under Jordanian rule, Israeli occupation and in exile this inevitably contoured the way in which they represented and remembered the city. The rare sketchbooks of Vladimir Tamari, reveal the everyday life of the city- bus drivers, people at cafes, passersby, tourist and friends, which accompanied by his witty remarks reveals the vibrancy of the city during the 60’s and 70’s. His paintings take a different approach as they focus, through abstraction and colour on imaging the multiplicity of the city in an array of colours. His painting of imprisonment at Muskbyeh prison, is one of the few paintings by Palestinians depicting experience in jail from that period and is a testimony to the changing times. For Kamal Boullata who appears on several occasions in Tamari’s sketchbook the city is shown through abstraction, studies in which line and light are key elements creating formal compositions which explore the space of the word and the city, inspired by colours found in the tile work its Holy sites.
Samia Halaby shares with the artists, the exploration of colour as a language for describing the relationship to the city. In exile, Jerusalem becomes a focal point, of longing and memories, in which distance is evoked through her palette. Similarly Jumana Husseni created many of her paintings of Jerusalem while living beyond its borders. Her paintings fashion an image of a fairytale and dream like city contoured by memories, dreams and aspirations. Vera Tamari’s recent work on show in this exhibition also deals with the subject of memory, and re-examines the relationship with the city via the history of precious family heirloom that belonged to her paternal grandmother. Her work casts light on the history of women’s experiences of the city and the changes that have occurred, as Tamari can no longer visit the city being and resident of the West Bank.
The idea of memories and aspirations, although very differently, are represented in the work of Taysir Sharaf and Sliman Mansour, who were influential in shaping an image of the city in the 70’s and 80’s as the focal point of Palestinian identity, imagery that became popular among Palestinians, which were reproduced on posters and postcards that became part of the collective imagination.
For many Palestinians Jerusalem today is only known to them through its image, the regulations that prevent Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip entering the city, and the difficulties created for those in Diaspora for visiting the city means that it is only through images, memories of older generations and narratives that they can visualize the city. This paradox casts light on the importance of its representation for Palestinians and the need to sustain the cultural sector in the city in the hope that one day all Palestinians will be able to visit its exhibitions and walk down its historic alleyways.
Tina Sherwell Tina Sherwell |