 February
2006
By
Ica Wahbeh Jordan Times, Weekender
|
“The wall and the check points”,
the exhibition on display at The Khalid Shoman Foundation -
Darat Al Funun, groups five Palestinian artists who give poignant
testimony of what the breaking up of Palestine means for them
and the people under occupation.
Young,
articulate and highly sensitive, the young artists express their
feelings both in eloquent words and in photographs, installations
and video recordings. It is at once a quest for self and greater
meanings in life, a graphic representation of basic human actions
that seem absolutely normal for most of the world but are often
denied to the Palestinians.
Whether
living in the occupied territories, temporarily passing through
or having only heard about the homeland, the artists show that
it can leave an indelible mark on their souls and wish to cast
that to the world.
|
| |
In
the main building, Rula Halawani’s video projections of
the wall are somber, desolate and dark like her mood.
“I
started documenting the wall almost from when they started
building it, but each time I developed the pictures all
that showed was its ugliness and my anger. Then the wall
reached Qalandia checkpoint. They started building it
right in the middle of the road, my road to work. I always
fantasized that one day we would plant trees in the middle
of that road. Once it reached Qalandia, the wall reached
me and found my fear.”
But
the fear became anger and she started taking pictures
of the huge slabs of concrete as they were mercilessly
being put up. The digital camera proved a godsend for
the artist; when taking pictures in sunny or rainy days,
the wall would appear eroded, broken, decrepit, ready
to go, just as she would love to see it.
So
when not whole in its dark grey mass of cement towering
over desolate streets littered with debris and tree branches,
the wall appears like a ghostly, tattered veil in the
sun or streaked with tears from the trickling rain, silent
mark of power destroying land and lives. The images of
Al Ram street whose neighbours suddenly found themselves
separated by the wall succeed each other for a few minutes
like “the pages of a story that is repeated, a never ending
story” scripted by the army of occupation.
|
|
| |
After Halawani’s images, meandering as if through the
narrow opening of a wall, the viewer reaches Emily Jacir’s
photo and video testimony. An American Palestinian, Jacir
asked “31 Palestinians in the world”: “If I could do anything
for you, anywhere in Palestine, what would it be?”
The
answers, often expected, at times surprising, come on
sheets of paper accompanying photographs in which she
tried to fulfill their wishes. Gripping and extremely
emotional, these people who are denied entry in their
country ask for parents and relatives to be embraced,
for loved ones to be met, for trees to be planted, for
food to be eaten or brought. A request is made to “sign
a condolence book for Faisal Al Husseini who was my hero
and idol”. A phone bill is settled for someone not allowed
to enter Jerusalem, a girl met only on the phone is invited
for a coffee, photos of a brother’s children are taken.
Simple actions impossible to be carried out are obligingly
undertaken by Jacir who feels that “the story of the Palestinians
is all the same, whether they are in West Bank, in a refugee
camp or in Gaza. For some, not being able to go to Palestine
is physical, for some emotional”.
And
seeing the video “Crossing Surda”, taken
through a hole in the bag, in defiance of the soldiers
who had “held me up at gun point” and confiscated an earlier,
innocuous tape, it is not difficult to understand why
it could be difficult to “go” to Palestine.
Filmed in 2003 for eight days to the staccato sound of
her feet treading the 2-km-long road connecting Ramallah
to Birzeit University where she taught for a while, Jacir
documents the daily tribulations of people who have to
walk the unpaved, destroyed road at the whim of the Israeli
army. Young and old, sick or disabled, carrying bags,
tired, busy, the passers by mingle with tanks, soldiers
and cars at either end of the road as they are denied
access on this stretch of land deliberately strewn with
debris, mounds of rock and checkpoints to make life difficult
and discourage movement.
On a small screen at the other end of the room can be
seen the Israeli army machine surreptitiously filmed.
Anti-personnel carriers, tanks, jeeps, uniformed and armed
soldiers move in slow motion, in contrast to the faster
pace of the big screen images.
People may be “randomly stopped, harassed, forbidden crossing
and tear gas may be thrown”. “Those that do have the ability
to move are subjected to the worst forms of humiliation
at every crossing in an effort to discourage people from
entering or moving around the country. These measures
have been implemented and designed to fragment and destroy
the fabric of our entire people. The situation is now
so extreme that going to Jerusalem is as impossible a
dream for a Palestinian in Syria as for a Palestinian
living 8 km away in Beit Jalla.”
|
|
| |
| |
In the Darat Workshop building Dana Erekat, Palestinian-American-Kuwaiti,
exhibits black and white photos, “Borders crossing
bodies”. They focus on women, on “how border
crossing affects them, how borders cross bodies in different
ways”.
Women, the most affected in times of crises, go about
their business, putting up with occupation, motherhood,
frayed tempers of idle or humiliated men, with the absence
of the bread winner, getting by, hiding hurt and pain,
crossing checkpoints with sad, haunted eyes or, in fortunate
cases, finding a way to make a living, working gaily,
eager to contribute even more to the household.
They, children eager to pose for the strange photographer,
clearly at a loss about how to spend the long days deprived
of all childhood joy, merchants capitalizing on the
mushrooming checkpoints where a whole new “industry”
has flourished, with produce and trinkets being sold
as those waiting to cross while away the hours, the
perennial wall, this time at Abu Dis, are captured by
Erekat expressively, with mastery.
People trying to squeeze between the slabs of the wall,
“body resisting” in more than one way the confinement,
old people, soldiers, vendors are caught on film. Children
going to school or forced to grow up before their time,
working to help the family, faces full of life, sad,
innocent, angry, flashing the V sign are constantly
photographed near a wall, in their “open air prisons”
that more and more try to isolate life, make it impossible.
Yet, amid misery, in the Ein Shams refugee camp, for
example, a car is being prepared for a wedding, maybe
a symbolic gesture of life going on.
|
|
| |
In the Blue House, Tareq Al Ghoussein, has his “Self
portrait” series of photos, “a commentary on
contemporary Western media representations of the Palestinian
as terrorist”.
Professor at the American University in Sharja, Ghoussein
is “drawn to the apparent similarities between the myth
of Sisyphus and the growing myth generated through the
Western media that all Palestinians are terrorists and
that the Intifada, like Sisyphus, seems condemned to
an endless cyclic struggle. Transcending media representations
has been an ongoing uphill battle for Palestinians and
Arabs”.
His
installation, of photos on rice paper, is full of symbolism.
It is about “barriers, land, longing and, ultimately,
belonging”.
The images of heavy concrete slabs succeed each other
in a zigzag, forcing the viewer to follow a winding
path among them. Coming back, the sequence changes,
the images, lit from above, form a cycle.
The fragility of the thin rice paper contrasts with
the sturdy, solid images it projects and shows the Japanese
influence on this artist who spent seven years in the
country of the rising sun. “They are a reference to
the shoji screens and something that is light, you can
tear,” while the solid concrete walls they depict seem
indestructible; moving among these images, one is presented
with different perspectives. A point the artist wants
to make, showing that “if you change the perspective,
the whole world changes it”, clearly a hint at the way
the world looks at the Palestinian identity and struggle.
Tackling the self, Ghoussein says: “As I attempt to
come to terms with the issues related to my personal
experience as a Palestinian-Kuwaiti that has never lived
within the borders of Palestine, it has become apparent
that this current body of work seeks to transcend the
obvious reference to the barrier constructed in Palestine.
The walls and mounds that appear throughout the images
also speak of my own individual struggles, irrespective
of the conventional notions of national identity.”
|
|
| 
|
Back
to the Darat Workshops, Rashid Masharawi’s documentary “Tension”
is an amazing record of life in Palestine. In towns and refugee
camps, at checkpoints or on streets, images of people succeed
one another at just the right pace to convey the feeling of
tension, a permanent state among the population.
Starting at Erez checkpoint in Gaza, it shows apprehensive men
presenting their IDs to the soldiers and the relief felt at
having been allowed passage, on the way to work and the means
to feed the family.
Soldiers check packages; hands clutch plastic bags or IDs; people
get into cars or, most often, are shown waiting. Waiting all
the time, to be allowed through, for work, for an end to occupation,
for a better life.
Fenced in one frame, the perspective suddenly opens up with
the sea off Gaza, a glimpse at the vastness of it, contrasting
the small strip of land where refugees live in crowdedness.
While most daily activities take place calmly, normally, if
guardedly, here and there an outburst of violence provides the
vent needed to relieve some of the pent up frustration. A man
aggressively takes apart nailed wooden planks; one meticulously
rips a pack of cigarettes into pieces; the hands of a vendor
purposefully tear parsley leaves. A blacksmith hits with dogged
determination the iron piece on the anvil; a mason carves with
exasperatingly regular moves a chunk of stone; and, inevitably,
in Hebron, Israeli settlers taunt a group of people with stones
and, when hit back, shoot indiscriminately, feeling the power
of the guns cradled in their arms and convinced of the “righteousness”
of their murderous act. The soldiers back off, non-witnesses
to the violence.
A young boy plays a war game, faithfully imitating the frisking,
kicking soldiers he must have seen in action many a time. He
forces the tiny hands of his companions up against the wall,
legs spread, and kicks them with gusto to the incredulous giggles
of the children, barely older than toddlers, who are not sure
it is a game or becoming serious. The wooden gun carries authority
and they comply, although not really convinced. Another generation
will grow with violence as daily staple.
Smoking, twirling canes, carrying bags, showing documents, playing
chess or cards, the hands are focused on, as are faces. Under
scrutiny by suspecting soldiers, sad, intent, alert, fearful,
defiant, rarely smiling, they are faces of a people apparently
resigned to its fate; but maybe not quite.
Under a helicopter circling Ramallah, chicken are grilled and
life goes on at a deceptively normal pace. A child sways on
a screechy, rusty swing. Neat rows of white-walled, red-roofed
settlements houses are contrasted to ramshackle dwellings in
refugee camps.
In Jerusalem, foot soldiers or mounted police, people sitting
idle, smoking, whiling away time or busy at a produce market,
a priest, and the walls of the old city are shown to the upbeat
sound of an Arabic drum. City lights, street vendors, shawerma
stands, traffic jams with the compulsory horn blowing follow
in quick succession only to be interrupted by a melancholy tune
accompanying a crossing point and a lengthier image of the legs
of a child dangling on a tree branch.
Masharawi proves a keen observer of human character and behaviour,
and his images capture reality with a force that transmits itself
to the viewer unadulterated.
The exhibition runs until April 13. |
| |
|
press
clips