{"id":34634,"date":"2024-10-04T11:57:39","date_gmt":"2024-10-04T09:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=34634"},"modified":"2025-09-11T17:38:37","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T15:38:37","slug":"visuals-and-voices-palestine-will-not-be-a-palimpsest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/visuals-and-voices-palestine-will-not-be-a-palimpsest\/","title":{"rendered":"Visuals and Voices: Palestine Will Not Be a Palimpsest"},"content":{"rendered":"
Art exhibitions and new books push back against a year of cancelling Palestinian art, culture, and voices.<\/span><\/h5>\n

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Malu Halasa<\/h4>\n

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After a year of the war on Gaza, signs and symbols, art, and visuals from and about Palestine are still being banned, dismissed or ignored. In the US, pro-Palestinian slogans and signs have been removed from college campuses, and professors have been \u201cadvised\u201d by university administrations not to express their views. Like American universities, museums and cultural institutions, once bastions of free speech and dissent, have been running scared. In September Pulitzer Prize winning author <\/span>Jhumpa Lahiri<\/span><\/a> declined an award from the Noguchi Museum after three of its employees were fired for wearing keffiyehs. Pro-Palestinian posters were responsible for one employee losing her job and others resigning from the <\/span>92nd Street Y<\/span><\/a>. Even a pin of the Palestinian flag caused ruptures \u2014 although Y bosses allegedly told the employee wearing it that a pin showing an Israel flag would be allowed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In London\u2019s major museums, censorship has taken on a more subtle form of indifference or outright avoidance. The extravagant <\/span>Silk Roads<\/span><\/i> exhibition in the British Museum ignores Gaza, an important <\/span>entrep\u00f4t<\/span><\/i> between the eastern and western Mediterranean the historic trade route in spices, incense and fabrics. As Katherine Pangonis has observed in her essay \u201cWritten in Fabric\u201d from the new anthology <\/span>Daybreak in Gaza<\/span><\/i><\/a>: \u201c\u2026 <\/span>gazzatum<\/span><\/i> \u2014 a finely woven fabric of linen or silk threads, called <\/span>gaze<\/span><\/i> in French and gauze in English \u2014 was derived from the place name of Gaza, from where it was thought to have originated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Victoria & Albert Museum organized an important summit during the 2022 Women Life Freedom protests in Iran and included <\/span>graffiti stencils<\/span><\/a> of the faces of dead Syrian protestors after that country\u2019s failed Arab Spring. The museum\u2019s blind spot when it comes to Palestine has been glaring. One wonders if it will also ignore the events in Lebanon. Apparently some resistance movements are sexier and more acceptable than others.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Art and words are intermeshed in the cultural frontline that has become Gaza\u2019s tragedy and humanitarian crisis. This spring at London\u2019s Barbican Centre, two collectors withdrew their works from the exhibition <\/span>Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textile in Art<\/span><\/i> after the Barbican cancelled the talk, \u201cThe Shoah after Gaza,\u201d by Indian novelist and socialist <\/span>Pankaj Mishra<\/span><\/a>. However, in September, the Barbican corralled its institutional nervousness and hosted \u201cVoices of Resistance,\u201d a panel of writers and activists organized by <\/span>Comma Press<\/span><\/a>. The panel had been scheduled to take place at the HOME Manchester theatre and gallery space in April. The venue cancelled the event after the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester and Region circulated false allegations of antisemitism and Holocaust denial against one of the panel\u2019s participating writers, <\/span>Atef Abu Saif<\/span><\/a>, the author of <\/span>Don\u2019t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide<\/span><\/i><\/a>. It was just one of many instances of censorship over the past twelve months that the Iraqi playwright <\/span>Hassan Abdulrazzak<\/span><\/a> wrote about for The Markaz Review. Interestingly after a public outcry HOME reinstated the panel, which went on to the Edinburgh Book Fair. For venues and festivals there is safety in numbers.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Nabil
Nabil Anani, \u201cIn Pursuit of Utopia #7,\u201d acrylic on canvas, 138×300 cm, 2020 (courtesy Nabil Anani).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Empty Chair<\/h4>\n

When the institutions opt out or prevaricate, smaller, potent initiatives fill the void. The current exhibition at P21 Gallery, <\/span>Art of Palestine|from the river to the sea<\/span><\/i><\/a>,<\/span><\/i> on until December 21, features the paintings, drawings, and installations of 28 artists. The exhibition was brought to London by Palestine Museum in the US, and includes tapestry and Gazan children\u2019s drawings from the 2008 Israel\u2019s Operation Cast Lead military campaign against Gaza.<\/span><\/p>\n

Art of Palestine<\/span><\/i> opens with a brightly colored and textured, acrylic painting of a tranquil landscape, by one of the founders of contemporary Palestinian art, Nabil Anani. The large-scale painting shows rows of trees, placid farmland, and the rolling hills where Raja Shehadeh once roamed in <\/span>Palestinian Walks<\/span><\/i> before the Palestinian countryside was divided by a separation wall, settler-only highways, and vandalized olive trees. The painting\u2019s title, \u201cIn Pursuit of Utopia #7,\u201d speaks volumes as the onslaught on Gaza continues, and settler violence on the West Bank and Israel\u2019s ground incursion into Lebanon intensifies. Anani says he has always \u201cbeen passionate about \u2026 the beauty of rural life and the breathtaking landscapes of Palestine.\u201d His solo exhibition <\/span>The Land and I<\/span><\/a>, is on until January 12, 2025, at Zawyeh Gallery, Dubai.<\/span><\/p>\n

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