Palestine after all is no ordinary place

                                    Edward Said

I don’t believe any place is ordinary, but Palestine is more extraordinary than most. Every state in the modern world has a history, often with borders defined by others or by outcomes of conflict. The conflicts in Palestine are still playing themselves out. 2008 marks 60 years since 1948 and what Palestinians call the Nakba, or the ‘catastrophe’, when hundreds of thousands were driven out by the fighting for their land. They expected their exile to be only temporary and believed they would return. Still living in refugee camps and conditions of exile, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people continue to wait for this ‘right of return’ and for a just resolution to the conflict that has afflicted this land for over two generations.

This exhibition attempts to show a broad survey of artistic practice by Palestinian artists across generations and geography. Despite the different practices and media, the imagery in many of the works invokes aspects of the conflict and of the current situation that all Palestinians have encountered. The refugee camps, with their dense, built-up housing and cramped conditions can be identified in Yazan Khalili’s altered photographs or in Monther Jawabreh’s Camp painting. The importance of the land, its topography and flora, are seen in Mohanad Yaqoubi’s and Shuruq Harb’s photographs, or in Adnan Zubeidi’s, Maha el Daya's and Sliman Mansour’s paintings. In Rula Halawani’s photographs, however, there are scenes of play and normality – family meals, playing in the snow or harvesting olives. Samar Ghattas’ enigmatic portrait images suggest layered identities and constricted vision, while Jawad Malhi’s paintings hint at dark memories and trauma.

The ongoing economic and military blockade of the Gaza strip, and the continuing political in-fighting following the elections of 2006, means the practical situation on the ground has been – and continues to be – profoundly difficult. For the artists, it has meant failed visa applications and denial of exit permits when invited to a residency or international forum; and due to the closures and travel restrictions, no travel between the West Bank and Gaza is possible in either direction to see exhibitions or meet other artists. But their artwork refuses to succumb to simple articulations of the problems. With the absence of galleries and only a small number of cultural organisations, artists come together in groups in an act of mutual support, organise their own exhibitions and continue to mentor other young artists through workshops and teaching. The two groups represented here, the Eltiqa’ Group and Windows from Gaza use the internet and their websites as an alternative space to show their work. In their paintings, they aim to celebrate the formal subjects of art-making: form, colour and light, and in their photographs to document the positive sides of life such as free access to the open spaces of the beach and sea, children playing or weddings. Documentation of deaths and violence is there also, but they consciously strive to show images of colour and life.

Ahmad Nawash, Ala Younis, Mohammed Nasrallah, Mohammed Shaqdih, Raed Ibrahim and Hani Alqam are artists from Jordan whose families came originally from Palestine in 1948. Mohammed Nasrallah’s imaginary sea and landscapes are metaphors for the idea of the homeland he has never been allowed to visit and that he holds in his imagination. They are not literal representations or evocations, but deliberate and conscious fantasies. Ahmad Nawash left his Palestinian village in 1948 at the age of 14, and the events he witnessed or heard about have continued to feed into his figurative imagery.

Artists from Tunisia or Algeria and from the UK have generously contributed examples of their work. The importance of Arabic calligraphy in the Islamic tradition of art as both written language and decorative form is illustrated in the work of Nja Mahdaoui and Omar Bilbeisi, as it is also in the work of Palestinian artist Nabil Anani. Anani’s Darwish commemorates the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, the poetic voice of Palestine, whose untimely death in August 2008 was mourned across the world. It is also an honour to include work by established artists in the UK such as Mona Hatoum, Antony Gormley, Maggi Hambling and Royal Academicians Craigie Aitchison, John Hoyland and Paul Huxley. Mona Hatoum’s ‘unfinished’ willow ‘cage’ is resonant of what could be an ordinary, handcrafted object (a basket perhaps) rendered uncanny and unfamiliar (a cage or trap?) on an intimate scale.

I began with a quote from Edward Said, and I end with a quote from Mahmoud Darwish – two of the Palestinian writers who lived most of their lives in exile and who articulated so many of the battles – political, psychological and cultural – that Palestinian artists have had to negotiate in their work and lives:

            Here, by the downslopes of hills, facing the sunset and time's muzzle,

            near gardens with severed shadows,

            we do what the prisoners do,

            and what the unemployed do:

            we nurture hope.

                                    (from ‘Under Seige’, trans. Fady Joudah)

Nicola Gray