Artworks movingly portray Palestinians’ woes

 
Notable Palestinian artists include contemporary figures like Mona Hatoum, Nabil Anani, and Malak Mattar, alongside established figures such as Kamal Boullata, Laila Shawa, and Vera Tamari. These artists work across various mediums, including painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installation, with their art often reflecting Palestinian culture, history, and political life.

In the quietude of his Ramallah studio in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian artist Nabil Anani works diligently on artworks deeply rooted in a movement he helped create during the political tumult of the late 1980s. Co-founded in 1987 by Anani and fellow artists Sliman Mansour, Vera Tamari and Tayseer Barakat, the New Visions art movement focused on using local natural materials while eschewing Israeli supplies as a form of cultural resistance. The movement prioritized self-sufficiency at a time of deep political upheaval across occupied Palestine. “New Visions emerged as a response to the conditions of the Intifada,” Anani said. “Ideas like boycott and self-reliance inspired a shift in our artistic practice at the time.”

Each of the founding members chose to work with a specific material, developing new artistic styles that fit the spirit of the time. The idea caught on, and many exhibitions followed locally, regionally and internationally.

Nearly four decades later, the principles of New Visions – self-sufficiency, resistance and creation despite scarcity – continue to shape a new generation of Palestinian artists for whom making art is both an expression and an act of survival.

Anani, now 82, and the other founding members are helping keep the movement’s legacy alive.

“We called it New Visions because, at its core, the movement embraced experimentation, especially through the use of local materials,” Anani said, noting how he had discovered the richness of sheepskins, their textures and tones and began integrating them into his art in evocative ways.

In 2002, Tamari, now 80, started planting ceramic olive trees for every real one an Israeli settler burned down to form a sculptural installation called Tale of a Tree. Later, she layered water colours over ceramic pieces, mediums that usually do not mix, defying the usual limits of each material, and melded in elements of family photos, local landscapes and politics. Artworks movingly portray Palestinians’ woes.

Sixty-six-year-old Barakat, meanwhile, created his own pigments and then began burning forms into wood, transforming surface damage into a visual language.

Abed Abdi is a sculptor and muralist, was born in Haifa, Palestine, in 1942, and still resides in that city. He belongs to the generation of post-1948 pioneering visual artists within the Palestinian community in Israel. He held his first exhibit in Tel Aviv in 1962, and graduated from the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 1972.