I am a working artist, a photographer living and working in an intensely political environment. The question of doing "political art" is not a question in the Palestinian context. Our whole existence is so overwhelmingly defined at the everyday level by our political circumstances – there is really no escaping it. Even when we don't think we are doing something political, because we are Palestinian, everyone else thinks we are. But more importantly, if artistic expression is about how we express certain experiences, sensations or feelings, then for Palestinians, the total reality of the occupation is something that is always there, in one way or another in our art.

My projects are political, yes. But they also try to express aspects of our experience and feelings as Palestinians, as a people. I hope very much that they allow others to look and enter into the pictures and reflect on their own relation to these experiences and feelings. Instead of simply telling a story, a very terrible story about a people and what has happened to them, I want to go further and create pictures that no matter where people are from or where they are living, they can find themselves in part of our story.

 Rula Halawani