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Legacies for the future
By
Ica Wahbeh
AMMAN
- Simply named "60 Years", the art on display at
Darat Al Funun brings together a retrospective of Ahmad Nawash's
paintings, a video by Suha Shoman and a wealth of caricatures
by Naji Al Ali.
The
title, obviously, commemorates the 60 years of Nakbeh, yet
the exhibition is not a plaintive narrative of dispossession,
but a demonstration of steadfastness, persistence, tribulations
that become acts of creation, leaving legacies for the future.
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In
the small, renovated room now called "lab", at the
lower entry, Shoman's video is a thoroughly touching montage
of footage laden with symbols that are sure to jolt the viewer,
force him out of his complacency.
Iconic
images that, by virtue of being shown over and over, inured
the onlooker to pain, and doublespeak politics are specially
used to stress the facts, drive them home, show them for what
they really are.
Starting
with the injunction "You shall not covet your neighbour's
house… nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that
is your neighbour's" (Exodus 20:17), the 13-minute video
makes use of religious symbols and teachings to stress the
warped way humanity interprets them. It tells about "the
tragic loss of Palestinian land, the struggle of the Palestinian
people and their cry for freedom".
Images
succeed each other in rapid sequence, religious symbols are
interspersed with aerial views of the monster wall, messages
of peace and understanding are contradicted by the cruel reality
of the occupation.
House
demolition, tanks firing, people taking cover, Israeli army
roughing up Palestinian youth, bodies piled up in a morgue,
funeral processions, images of death and destruction abound.
In
parallel, the places of worship and their holy men teach tolerance,
give messages of peace and coexistence. Yet one wonders how
the cherubic Jewish boy in the temple will grow up and behave
once in the Israeli army, how the Pope's message of harmony
and understanding tallies with his other, pernicious, statement
about Islam.
Highly
symbolic, the video's religious symbols highlight the contradiction
between holy teachings and the tragic situation in the Holy
Land, asks questions, highlights pain and misery, and the
inaction of an indifferent world. Appropriately, Mozart's
"Requiem" is playing in the background, a lament
for humanity as a whole, for a tragic reality.
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In
the main building, Nawash's retrospective covers years of
work that tells the story of his people. "His main concern
is humanity's dilemma in general, and through it he depicts
the particular plight of the Palestinians," says Wijdan
in an accurate assessment of his work.
The
paintings, almost caricatural in style, defy perspective and
proportion. The subject matter is chaotic and symbolic, images
the result of a process of metamorphosis and crystallisation
whose outcome is anything but clear.
His
multi-headed/faced people, misshapen or lacking body parts,
do not inspire revulsion; rather, they carry meanings: the
many personalities a human being displays, the dilemmas he
faces, the different stages of transformation in his life
and thinking, the myriad interactions with fellow man or nature's
creatures.
Man
and animal converge to become one and to, perhaps, convey
the idea of communion and evolution, or maybe just of that
side of the human being that often takes over and is responsible
for the evil impulses.
Most
often Nawash's people brandish guns. Men and women raise them
up in a menacing gesture, an allusion to some struggle against
the occupation, reinforced by the discrete presence of the
Palestinian
flag; nothing ostentatious, integral part of the human figure.
Stories
are told by Nawash's people. Like illustrations in children's
books, the characters tell of their experiences: victims of
cruelty and war, amputees show their stumps; heads appear
in odd places or fuse together; bodies levitate, attach themselves
to others to become one, in some symbiotic, sapping existence
that speaks much about family, nation and extended Arabic
nation.
Mothers
and children, the first victims of aggression, are part of
Nawash's narrative, as are images of cruelty to others, death
and, incredibly, of celebration and bucolic life.
If
at later stages in the artist's life the colours become more
pastel, spreading calm, showing wisdom and resignation, the
darker images of earlier years speak of more violence, more
suffering, less hope, or maybe less patience with the state
of affairs.
In
yet another group of works, the fusion of bodies (man, animal,
bird) is overwhelming. A painful process of transmutation
takes place with, as a result, grotesque figures and bodies.
It is the artist's way of decrying the fate of his people,
one that offers no hope for a better outcome.
Or,
as artist Kamal Boullata puts it: "Beneath leaden skies,
they [Nawash's people] play their parts, displaying the absurdity
of their being and their seeming obeisance to the dictates
of an anguished existence in an awful lull. With nothing but
their joint existence in common, they float in their void
like prisoners inside vicious circles."
Quite
a sad conclusion for the existence of a people who, for 60
years, lived dispossessed, waiting for a solution to its plight
and who cannot afford even the illusion of hope.
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In
the Blue House, Al Ali's caricatures need only be contemplated.
The intense artist whose output could not be censured but
through assassination draws political cartoons in black and
white to document and mock reality.
Hanthala,
his famous character, like the viewer, watches life unfold
in front of him. The images draw the onlooker out of his comfort
zone, tell of the sad lot of the Arab nation, more specifically
of the Palestinians, a people the community of nations chose
to forget about.
The
exhibition will be on until July 31.
Ica Wahbeh
The Jordan Times
22/6/2008
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