Raising awareness of the situation in Palestine, while avoiding the manichaean view and discouraging images commonly conveyed to us by the media, is a difficult challenge to undertake. By raising itself to the human level, to that of the dramas that trouble it and the hopes that inhabit it, the Never-Part exhibition has chosen to reveal a little-known Palestine, a real-life land, seen from within and told from a compelling and intimate angle. This human account is essential, it is the grounds for a new relationship with others and a conflict that seems to us ordinarily remote and intangible. By conveying, with immediacy and modesty, Palestinians’ attachment to their roots through a series of objects that signify this atavistic and emotional link, the exhibition places them in the realm of universal values. These Palestinian artists are above all citizens of the world, their means of expression works and the accounts of life they provide us with affect us by appealing to our human side.

In order to secure long-term stability, the prevention of future conflicts and the consolidation of sustainable development of a community aware of its responsibilities, it is essential to reinforce civil society, encourage intellectual production and engage with the artistic scene, for it is on these pillars of progress that an identity that is proud of itself and respectful of others can be built. Contributing to the dissemination of a positive image of Palestine by supporting some of its most talented artists, who will in turn enjoy greater local influence a wider engagement locally. It is also from this perspective that our attachment to the education and support for local governance, the main prongs of our development cooperation efforts in Palestine, should be regarded. Our work there is both recognised and appreciated.

Today, Palestine is one of the development partners with which Belgium conducts a process of sustained cooperation. By focusing our policy on a limited number of sectors and ensuring efficient management of funds and aid through the use of best practice, we are helping set up a dynamic momentum for the benefit of all, in order to fight poverty and create sustainable development, the necessary conditions for dialogue and reconciliation. 

Charles Michel

Minister of Development Cooperation

Never-Part, the title Jack Persekian has given the exhibition he is proposing for Masarat Palestine at BOZAR, resists all attempts at translation, in this way describing the gesture of keeping the object to oneself, not parting with it.  Never-Part thus condenses the very history of Palestine and the Palestinians, and all the works contributed to this exhibition by the artists serve to remind us, in a distant way, of the story of the house key preciously kept by the exiles and refugees of 1948, the symbol of possessions, of land, of the country itself. 

Irony, or at least paradox, of art, Never-Part nevertheless forces separation and underlines its necessity: “I want to part with it once and for all.  I want to tear it up into tiny pieces.  I want the map to look like the geography it represents.  It’s the only way to free myself from this tyranny” (Sobhi al-Zobaidi); or its impossibility: “This little object is too precious and personal to part with; I don’t even want to ‘lend’ it to an exhibition for fear of losing it on the way” (Emily Jacir referring to the jar of dibis (molasses) given to her by her grandmother when she last visited Bethlehem). In this exhibition of the work of a dozen artists representing Palestinian diversity across the world, the part left to childhood inhabits the exhibition, above all in the gesture that underlies the works presented here, that of holding the object against oneself, against one’s body, to express inseparability.

In the link proposed between texts, objects and images, the object seems to lose its importance. At least it only amounts to a work through its association with the text, the account, the history that it evokes. Pre-text, it even tends to lose itself in the story: Emily Jacir does not let us see the object, rather its photographic reproduction; Sobhi al-Zobaidi presents us with his map of Palestine in the form of a video clip; Mona Hatoum, a reproduction/reconstitution of the rug-territory of her childhood; Jumana Aboud brings into play the very image of paintings tossed onto the fire… 

And yet at the same time, the physical object, whether present or absent, takes us back to the body of the artist as a child. It was on a rug taken by her family into exile in Lebanon that Mona Hatoum, as a child, gained her first experience of designs, motifs and wefts.  This rug, a child’s play area, is currently a metaphor for the territory of Palestine.  It was at the age of 13 and emerging from childhood that Sobhi al-Zobaidi received from his friend and hero, Hasan, a young man he had met at the Bir Zeit refugee camp, a map representing pre-Nakba Palestine (“all the Palestinian towns and villages were on this map!”). The jar of dibis given to Emily Jacir by her grandmother on the artist’s last visit contains within it all the jars of dibis given to the little girl on each of her visits.  With Asad Azi and Vera Tamari, it is the faces of the mothers that symbolise inseparability.  One painting represents the ghostlike mother of Asad Azi.  The artist covers her in a cloth in order to avoid the insistent gaze of the mother from which the child in him cannot escape. Vera Tamari presents us with a ceramic showing a young girl from Jaffa in the pre-Nakba period.  This face of the mother as a young girl is also the history of a family and of its people, which the artist tells us he does not want to part with.

Childhood stories, minute stories, the sum and composition of which, in this exhibition, tell us something about History.  The History of Palestine.

And this is where Never-Part coincides with the aims of Masarat Palestine.  By presenting a collection of the most contemporary artistic approaches, we wanted to throw light on history, investigate, recreate and tell the story of past and present. For it is through this multitude of stories and artistic gestures that the country of Palestine exists.

Fabienne Verstraeten

Organiser of Masarat Palestine

“Being a Palestinian is neither an occupation nor a slogan. A Palestinian is firstly a human being who loves life, trembles at the sight of almond tree flowers, has gooseflesh on feeling the first drops of autumn rain, makes love to satisfy a natural physical desire and not in response to a watchword, has children to pass on the name and preserve the species and life and not through any love of death, unless in later life death proves to be preferable to life! In other words, the long occupation has not succeeded in effacing our human nature or in suppressing our urge to speak and our feelings when faced with the barriers erected in front of us.” It is with these words that Mahmoud Darwish, the great poet of the Palestinian Diaspora, reminding us of the universality of the human condition, shows the way of man among men.

It is this condition, so mistreated, battered, bruised, torn to shreds and yet still carrying an inextinguishable hope, this History of a people that runs through the history of those who keep it alive, which the objects displayed whisper to us. Objects of life, rooted in existence, inhabiting the heart and memory of those who created them or are their custodians, these artefacts of everyday life expressing as much the individual faced with his land, his memory, an uncertain future as the collective inspiration of a people searching for its identity, viscerally clinging onto the hope of a kinder fate.

Using a language whose signs have more to do with the sensitivity of the artists than a univocally documented reality, the objects assembled by the artists for the Never-Part exhibition, nevertheless form a moving alphabet of the Palestinian drama. It is an intimate chronicle, between convocation and disappearance, which modestly unveils bits of existence, the eluvium of the dream of a land at peace.

The Centre for Fine Arts sees itself as a window onto the world, to the variety of expressions and opinions that are current in it, while keeping a critical but never insensitive eye on the tragedies that take place across it. Although the view expressed here is different, it cannot leave us indifferent. Faced with a complex reality, caught up in the web of a daily drama with a wall for horizon, it is necessary to show, render visible what is ordinarily hidden or underground, for the aims of the Palestinian artists expressed here, although specific, are also universal. To borrow the words of the poet again, “Palestine is not limited to Palestine, it obtains its artistic legitimacy from a wider human space”. It is this space that Never-Part explores, with much finesse, up to its outer reaches.

We like to thank Charles Michel, Minister of Development Cooperation, for his support, and the International Relations Directorate of the Wallonia-Brussels French Community.

We would also like to express our profound gratitude to Jack Persekian, curator of the exhibition, who was able to create the conditions for a poignant and apt dialogue throughout the exhibition, with his assistant Lara Khaldi and editor Rasha Salti.

Our warm thanks also go to Leila Shahid, Chief Representative of Palestine to the European Union and Belgium and originator of this fine project; Fabienne Verstraeten, Director of Halles de Schaerbeek, who carried the Masarat Palestine Festival to the font, with Mark Bouteiller, the coordinator of the festival; Fatin Farhat, whose artistic involvement in Palestine was precious, and Barbara Vanderlinden, Director of the Brussels Biennial, partner of the exhibition.

Finally, let us not forget the team from Bozar Technics led by Roger Vander Meulen and Joris Erven, and Christophe Van Damme, whose scenography was in harmony with a project requiring a close relationship with the exhibits, France de Kinder, Director of Exhibitions at the Centre for Fine Arts and Alberta Sessa, who was responsible for coordinating the exhibition.

Paul Dujardin                       Etienne Davignon

General Manager                 Chairman of the Board of Directors