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How
Green
Was
My
Valley
ArtPalestine
PB, 1
International
Whitebox
Art Center
Artists
Mohamed Abusal
Tarek Al-Ghoussein
Mohammed Al Hawajri
Joseph Audeh
Samira Badran
Taysir Batniji
Rana Bishara
Haitham Ennasr
Tanya Habjouqa
Wafa Hourani
Mohammed Musallam
Larissa Sansour
Amer Shomali
Mary Tuma
Artists
Curatorial Statement
Curator
Mary Evangelista
2,
3
How Green Was My Valley highlights the work of a generation
of artists who have been led by the subject of Palestine to
develop new aesthetic visions and practices in the face of a
decades long occupation.
Palestinian art, whether produced in the occupied
territories or in diaspora, has become increasingly experimental, engaging international shifts that have merged
contemporary art practices with eco-activism, urbanism,
documentary filmmaking, and archival methods. How Green
Was My Valley will spotlight artists who are currently contributing to these expanding theoretical frameworks while giving
equal attention to those who evocatively utilize form to
reflect what national poet Mahmoud Darwish referred to as
an “incurable malady,” the persistence of Palestinian hope.
Employing photography, video, installation, and new
media, the exhibition’s artists explore issues of mobility and
migration, depleted natural resources, and political marginalization as experienced through Palestine’s fragmented
state. Although a central theme of How Green Was My Valley is
a shrinking land that has been systematically broken apart
over the past sixty-five years, many of the included works
envision Ramallah, Jerusalem, Gaza, Hebron, and other Palestinian cities as dual sites of ruin and potential.
Curatorial Statement
Mohamed Abusal
Tarek Al-Ghoussein
A Metro in Gaza explores the dreamlike possibility of an underground metro station in Gaza. The project imagines a system
powered by generators, with high standards of cleanliness, order,
punctuality, and passenger safety. These features are meant to
endure the raids, civic poverty, and intensified blockade in Gaza.
Proposing a network of seven metro lines to connect the different areas of Gaza Strip, Abusal creates illuminated metro signage
for multiple tracks which transport passengers from Gaza City to
border cities and other crossings, including Jabalia, Al-Shate’,
Al-Breij, Al-Maghazi, Al-Nseirat, Deir Al Balah, Khan Younis, and
Rafah. Abusal argues that with 55,000 inhabitants per square kilometre, a metro system is less a pipe dream than a necessity.
By eliciting opinions—ranging from naive and comical to pessimistic—from Gaza City’s citizens, Abusal documents what it might
mean to have a local metro system. A Metro in Gaza provides a
daring, critical, and scathing commentary on what is deemed permissible in technology and society in Gaza today.
C Series is an extension of themes Ghoussein has been exploring for
the past few years. While most of his work has been concerned with
barriers, land, longing, and belonging, C Series departs from these
defining/confining concepts and instead focuses on visualized ideas
of transience.
Although Ghoussein does not set out to investigate the notion
of transience, his work has developed by exploring ideas related to
land and place. His strong emphasis on longing unexpectedly led to
a consideration of changing landscapes and ephemeral moments
that are fixed in time rather than located in a specific place.
(In) Consideration of Myths documents the contemporary
human condition through enacting fragments associated with
mythical constructions. Expanding on earlier work, this series
considers how myths can be interpreted through explorations of
the relation between the individual and place.
A Metro in Gaza, 2011, 40x30 cm, Archival digital prints. Courtesy artist.
C Series, 2007 and (In) Consideration of Myths, 2012-13, Archival Digital Prints, Courtesy Taymour Grahne Gallery.
4,
5
Mohammed Al Hawajri
Joseph Audeh
M43 depicts scenes that are moments of micro-resistance and
gestures that subvert the relationship between the occupier and
the occupied. They function as a diary of daily events that are
both real and fictional; the landscape is empty as if suspended in
the imagination of a child playfully weaving together situations
in a subversive manner. The scenes progress like a film, with
a laughing turtle that appears at times as a soldier’s helmet
and at other times as a panicked soldier (from Qalandiya
International).
For almost one thousand years, the saqiya, an ancient waterraising technology designed by Arab polymath Al-Jazari, thrived
in environments like Egypt and Palestine with just one resource—
manpower. Today, water pumps and huge irrigation works dot the
Middle Eastern landscape, using diesel, crude oil, and vast amounts
of resources as an energy source. Machine for Raising Water tracks
the extraordinary agricultural legacy, impressive record of water
works, and rapid hydrological development of the Nile and Jordan
River Valley from the era of the saqiya through today. This project
asks why society has abandoned the saqiya in favor of more industrial
irrigation solutions, and it proposes a revision of this device as a
way to reclaim this lost regional environmental knowledge in Egypt
and Palestine. Through its design and interaction with local water
mechanics, farmers, and architects in Cairo and the lower Delta,
it offers multiple social groups a chance to meet, collaborate,
and translate their concerns about water scarcity into advanced
technological achievements in this field and possibly others.
M43, 2009, 44 watercolor drawings on paper, Courtesy Mark Hachem Gallery.
Machine for Raising Water, 2012-14, 3D-printed plaster, archival digital prints. Courtesy artist.
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Samira Badran
Taysir Batniji
Have a Pleasant Stay! is a space of reflection and empathy, a
visual and physical metaphor of the concept of suffocation and
imprisonment. It should be viewed as a summation of the obstacles,
uncertainties, and daily insecurities of Palestinian lives under the
military occupation.
Transit is a clandestine video chronicle of voluntary and involuntary displacement created using a series of still images paced by
the sounds of the slide projector. Produced in the transit areas between Egypt and Gaza, Batniji’s stills betray the fundamentals of
documentary photography with blurred figures, awkward angles,
and moments of inaction. Located in the state-of-in-between that
characterizes the many hours spent waiting for clearance to and
from Gaza, the video is also semiautobiographical, as the artist is
both unauthorized video-maker and suspended traveler.
Have a Pleasant Stay!, 2009, Installation, Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation. Courtesy artist.
Transit, 2004, HD video. Courtesy artist.
8,
9
Rana Bishara
Haitham Ennasr
Black and white handcuffs woven into a large size installation
hanging freely to create a two dimensional artwork with lighting.
This artwork honors Palestinian prisoners and their legacy of
sacrifices for freedom and dignity.
The artist created this work to raise awareness and shed light on
the long history of illegal and inhuman conditions and behaviors in
the Israeli occupation toward prisoners who represent fighters for
freedom and liberty: the longest occupation in modern history. After
66 years of occupation approximately 4,881 Palestinian security
detainees and prisoners are still held today in Israeli prisons, 373 of
them from the Gaza Strip. An additional 1,415 Palestinians are held
in Israel Prison Service facilities for being in Israel illegally, 18 from
the Gaza Strip.
Not only Palestinian prisoners but also their families are
hostages in the long history of dehumanization, abuse, and torture
during which many prisoners paid with their lives for the freedom
of their people. A large number of children have been born in
Israeli prisons to mothers who have been sentenced for life, many
prisoners are under age, and for a long time prisoners from Gaza
were prohibited from visits by their families because of the siege.
Bishara sees her duty as an artist to morally, visually, and
conceptually bring about changes in perception toward her people,
especially toward prisoners who have sacrificed their lives in prison
for freedom.
Emotional Labor is a project in which the normative qualities of
relationships and friendships are reexamined through the lens
of labor. The labor is documented as an archive of dates in which
the artist, referred to as writer, thinks romantically about two
other Palestinian men who also live in New York. This archive is
referred to as love letters, or the documentation of emotional labor
exchanged between two people. Here, both men indicate that they
do not wish to pursue romantic involvement with the writer. The
notebooks, containing these written exchanges, were then sent
to the men for them to sign, their signatures an indication of the
conclusion of emotional labor, and the writer’s ownership of it.
Kuffiyah for Prisoners, 2009, Installation
Emotional Labor, 2014, iPad app and archival inkjet prints. Courtesy artist.
10, 11
Tanya Habjouqa
Wafa Hourani
Occupied Pleasures is an exploration of the moments where
ordinary men and women demonstrate a desire to live, not just
simply survive. More than four million Palestinians live in the West
Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, where the political situation
regularly intrudes upon the most mundane of moments. Movement
is circumscribed and the threat of violence hangs overhead. This
creates the strongest of desires for the smallest of pleasures,
and a sharp sense of humor about the absurdities that a 65-year
occupation has produced.
Qalandia 2067 takes its name from the main checkpoint crossing
through the West Bank security fence which divides the cities of
Ramallah and ar-Ram; it is a site of political unrest and human
rights concerns. Dating his piece 2067—one hundred years after
the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War—Hourani has constructed five scale
models envisioning the future of a refugee camp where time seems
to have regressed rather than evolved. Basing each segment on an
actual site—the airport, border crossing, and 3 settlements— the
buildings are rendered as war-ravaged and crumbling, crowned by
implausibly archaic remnants of TV antennae. Each building is a
miniature light-box illuminating glimpses into the private lives
of the residents through film strips placed in the windows, an
unnerving reminder that this science fiction horror is, for many, an
everyday experience (from Saatchi Gallery, London).
“One image is not enough to understand the social and the
political complexity in Palestine.”
Occupied Pleasures, 2011, Archival inkjet print. Courtesy artist.
Qalandiya 2067, 2014, mixed media installation. Courtesy artist.
12, 13
Mohammed Musallam
Larissa Sansour
Cultural Siege is told through the slogan of the orange fruit. Palestine
was once famous for its orange export, hundreds of years ago. Today,
what was once an abundance of orange trees has dwindled to
a fraction of its former size, due to modern construction and the
expansion of Israeli and Palestinian populations. The orange—and
the scene of an orange tree—is a symbol of Palestinian identity and
ancient heritage.
Cultural Siege expresses loss of identity, historical memories,
and deprivations in contemporary Palestinian life and culture.
After years in exile, the Palestinian artist returns to her native
town, Bethlehem, only to find that the town has been divided by the
Israeli segregation wall. Unable to see friends and family, Sansour
sets out to confront the wall in an absurd and bizarre duel exposing
the political madness of the region.
Bethlehem Bandolero is a kitsch video featuring Larissa
Sansour herself as a Mexican gunslinger arriving in Bethlehem for a
duel with the Israeli Segregation Wall. Wearing a big, red sombrero
and a scarf, she walks the streets of Bethlehem and greets the
people before taking off for her final showdown. The editing is
inspired by television sitcom effects from the seventies. The humor
of the piece is stressed by the underlying music (courtesy Brooklyn
Museum).
Cultural Siege, 2012, HD image. Courtesy artist.
Bethlehem Bandolero, 2005, video. Courtesy artist.
14, 15
Amer Shomali
Mary Tuma
In 1987, Palestinian activists were developing alternative and
autonomous structures that would make them economically separate from the Israeli military occupation. In one such experimental
project in Beit Sahour, residents hoped to produce dairy products
as an alternative to the monopoly of the Israeli-made Tnuva. A few
days after the start of production, the Israeli army raided the farm,
arrested the activists, and gave them a military order to close down
the farm. The activists decided to smuggle the cows at night and
hide them in their houses, backyards, and eventually in caves in
the surrounding mountains. The Israeli army went on a massive,
four-year hunt for the eighteen cows that represented autonomy for
the Palestinians and a “threat to national security” for the Israelis.
In 1991, the Madrid Accords were signed and as a consequence the
struggle for resistance and autonomy was replaced by a relationship
of interdependence with the occupation forces. In the sculpture,
the cows are left suspended in midair, incomplete, grazing on the
Paris Protocol.
Twisted Rope was made from old scraps of traditional Palestinian
dresses, kaffiyas, and other fabrics found on both sides of Israel’s
“security wall.” These scraps were twisted into sections and
interlinked to form a rope measuring 60 feet, the length that would
allow one person on each side to climb simultaneously as counterweights and meet at the top. Twisted Rope is meant to reflect the
desperation of those living near the wall to be with family and
friends on the other side or to simply climb to the top to view the
horizon, their once-familiar landscape, now cut from view.
Pixelated Intifada, 2014, 3D model. Courtesy artist.
Twisted Rope, mixed fabrics, 2011. Courtesy artist.
16, 17
Afterword
Raouf J. Halaby
Without exception, every Palestinian has a first-hand experience with dislocation,
uncertainty, a perpetual search for identity, and a strong yearning for justice and statehood.
And without exception, every Palestinian has deep affinities with vegetation: the olive tree,
zaatar (thyme), saber (cactus fruit), vegetables of every kind and color, and the citrus fruit
(lemons, oranges, grapefruits and tangerines), to name but a few, are deeply embedded
in Palestinian roots and cultural identity.
The exhibition poses the following question: How green is the Palestinian valley—that
Kafkaesque valley in which Palestinians negotiate and navigate through myriad challenges?
Mohammed Musallam’s Cultural Siege compresses the Palestinian experience in a powerful
and dynamically expressive visual statement. The installation depicts a cluster of vibrant
green leaves in the center of which is a contrasting, intensely colored orange. While the
orange is still attached to the tendrils, the artist chose a cold and callous metal bolt that
violates the fruit’s natural form, thus despoiling it and forever desecrating its character.
Thrust through the leathery rind, the bolt’s head, counterbalanced by a washer and a nut,
constrict and contort what would have otherwise been a normal sphere into a strange
looking deformed elliptical. The orange thus becomes a metaphor for Palestinians and the
destruction of their institutions, identity, and dignity.
In Taysir Batniji’s Transit, there are two plain and sterile-looking rooms that recede into the
background, much like interrogation spaces one encounters at border crossings between
Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. While the background is an antiseptic white
void of any life, the foreground is a large waiting room with a centrally positioned door
flanked by two cheap black vinyl sofas. The tiled floor, which begins in the foreground,
punctures the space to create a receding plane that merges background and foreground
into one large waiting room. Space and sofas are props in a composition that depicts
three seated, dejected-looking men—two to the right, one to the left.
Palestinians, much like Godot, are all too familiar with waiting: waiting for documents,
waiting for permission to go to the hospital, waiting at check points for hours at a time
to go to work or school, waiting for permission to plant and harvest their fields, waiting
for permission to visit relatives in an adjoining neighborhood or village, waiting for justice,
waiting for dignity, waiting for statehood and freedom, 65 years of waiting, waiting, waiting.
In addition to dislocation and alienation, in one way or another each art work in this
unique exhibit deals with the forces that rob human beings of identity and freedom in a
perpetual collective tragedy.
Afterword
Artist Bios
Mohamed Abusal was born in Gaza in 1976. His artistic
projects are daring, critical, and scathing comments on what is
deemed permissible in terms of technology and civilization in
Gaza today. His Metro in Gaza (2012) proposes a network of seven
metro lines to connect the different areas of Gaza Strip. He made
an illuminated metro sign and set off to fix and photograph this
sign wherever he imagined the metro stations should be. Shambar
(2013) explores alternative and creative light solutions created or
lived by people in Gaza as a result of the continuous disconnection
of electricity. Shown at Al-Mamal Foundation in Jerusalem, and the
French Institute in Gaza, Ramallah, and Nablus, the work exists as a
photographic and painting series. Abusal has exhibited extensively
around the world over the last decade, notably in France, where
he has had several solo exhibitions, in addition to the US, UK,
Australia, and Dubai. In 2005 he was awarded the Charles Aspry
Prize for Contemporary Art. He is a founding member of “Eltiqa,”
an active group of contemporary artists that came together in 2002.
Tarek Al-Ghoussein has exhibited extensively in Europe, the
United States, and The Middle East. He has held solo exhibitions
in Roy Miles Gallery, London; The Third Line, Dubai, UAE; Brigitte
Schenk Gallery, Köln, Germany; Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah,
UAE. His solo show and second monograph of his work, Kesh
Angels, launched at Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York in January
2014. Al-Ghoussein participated in numerous group exhibitions
in prominent venues such as the 55th and 53rd Venice Biennales,
Venice, Italy; Singapore Biennale, Singapore; 6th and 7th Sharjah
Biennales, Sharjah, UAE. Al-Ghoussein’s work has been acquired by
the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, USA; Victoria and
Albert Museum in London, UK; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah,
UAE; Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan; and the Arab Museum of
Modern Art in Doha, Qatar; among many others. He is currently
Professor of Visual Arts at New York University, Abu Dhabi.
Mohammed Al Hawajri holds a first prize from the international Summer Academy (Darat Al Funun) Khalid Shoman
Foundation, Amman under the supervision of Professor Marwan
Qassab Bashi. Al Hawajri has participated in numerous local and
foreign group exhibitions, including Palestine, Creativity In All Its
States (2009-10) at the Arab World Institute in Paris and National
Museum in Bahrain, with Cactus Borders (funded by the Arab Fund
for Arts and Culture), and Guernica in Gaza (2013), with support
from the Danish Centre for Development and Culture in Palestine.
Al Hawajri has been invited to participate in several events and art
workshops in Jordan, Italy, France, Switzerland, and Egypt, and he
is a founding member of the “Eltiqa” group for Contemporary Art. Al
Hawajri is represented by Mark Hachem Gallery in Paris and Beirut.
Joseph Audeh is an artist whose work engages architecture,
environmental change, and technology. His various projects
imagine solutions to meet future energy needs by combining old
forms of environmental knowledge with breakthroughs in emerging
technology. Audeh was selected as a Berkeley Design Fellow (2011),
a finalist for the Frieze Writer’s Prize (2012), and a traveling artist
for the River Has Two Banks at Makan Art Space, Amman (2012).
He studied Architecture at NYU and recently completed an artist
residency at Townhouse Gallery, Cairo (2013).
Samira Badran was born in 1954 in Tripoli, Libya to a
Palestinian family. Badran studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in
Cairo and the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence. Her father,
Bios
18, 19
the artist Jamal Badran, also played an important role in her
artistic development. She has exhibited at the Sharjah Biennial,
Al Hoash—the Palestinian Art Court in Jerusalem, The UNESCO
Palace in Paris, The Modern Art Gallery in Baghdad, the Jordanian
National Gallery of Fine Arts in Amman, the Washington Museum
of Women in the Arts, Musèe du Luxembourg, Paris, Centro
Internazionale Multimedia, Italy, Gemeetemuseum den Haag,
Foreign Ministry of Berlin, Al-Ma’mal Foundation, Jerusalem and
Espai Agora, Barcelona. Badran has taught classes of drawing at the
International Academy of Art in Ramallah, Palestine. She currently
lives and works in Barcelona.
Taysir Batniji was born in Gaza in 1966, He studied art at AlNajah University in Nablus in Palestine. In 1994, he was awarded
a fellowship to study at the School of Fine Arts in Bourges. Since
then, he has divided his time between France and Palestine. During
this period spent between two countries and two cultures, Batniji
developed a multi-media practice, focusing on photographic and
video images. Following his first solo show in Paris in 2002 that
showed works produced in Gaza, he multiplied his participation in
a number of exhibitions, biennales, and residencies in Europe and
across the world, among which were the Rencontres d’Arles and
C’est pas du Cinema! in Fresnoy in 2002, Dreams and Conflicts,
Contemporary Arab Representations at the 50th Venice Biennale in
2003, Heterotopias at the Thessalonique Biennale and the Sharjah
Biennale in 2007, Palestine c/o Venice at the Venice Biennale in
2009, The Future of a Promise at the Venice Biennale in 2011, Now
Babylon at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark,
Recreational Purpose at the National Museum of Bahrain, and
Everyday Rituals at the Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah in 2014. He
was awarded the Abraaj Group Art Prize in 2012. His works can be
found in the collections of many prestigious institutions including
the Centre Pompidou and the FNAC in France, the V&A and The
Imperial War Museum in London, the Queensland Art Gallery in
Australia and Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi.
Rana Bishara was born and raised in the village of Tarsheha
in the Galilee. She is a visual artist whose creative practice
includes sculpture, installation work, and performance art. Her
artwork functions simultaneously as an elegy to the Palestinian
Nakba (the Arabic term for The Great Disaster that began in
1948), an unmasking of the brutality of the Israeli occupation of
Palestine, and a critique of the biased Western media’s depiction
of the Palestinians’ struggle against their occupiers. The objects
employed in her artwork perform as surrogates for the body and
spirit of Palestine and its people. Her work, in both its physical
and conceptual manifestations is an expression of the inseparable
blending of the personal and political experiences that define the
identity of every Palestinian.
Haitham Ennasr is a Brooklyn-based new media artist and
game designer who works under the pseudonym Limited Liability
Company, a Limited Liability Company. His work focuses on spaces
created through play and the documentation and representation
of personal imaginaries. Ennasr earned his MFA in Design and
Technology from Parsons The New School for Design (New York),
and his BSc in Computer Information Technology from the Arab
American University of Jenin (Palestine). His work has been shown
at the Museum of the Moving Image (New York), Babycastles (New
York), Parsons The New School for Design (New York), and the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Michigan).
Artist Bios
Tanya Habjouqa was born in Jordan and educated in the United
States, receiving her masters in Global Media and Middle East
Politics from the University of London SOAS. Beginning her career
in Texas, she documented Mexican migrant communities and urban
poverty before returning to the Middle East. Tanya is known for
gaining unique access to sensitive gender, social, and human rights
stories in the Middle East. She is a freelance photographer, features
writer, and a founding member of Rawiya photo collective (founded
by five female photographers from across the Middle East). She is
a recipient of the Magnum Foundation 2013 Emergency Fund for
her project, “Occupied Pleasures.” Habjouqa has worked on the
front lines in Iraq, Lebanon, Darfur, and Gaza. Her series “Women of
Gaza” is in the permanent collection of the Boston Museum of Fine
Art. Based in East Jerusalem, she is working on personal projects
that explore sociopolitical dynamics, identity politics, occupation,
and subcultures of the Levant. She is published in Foreign Policy,
Le Monde, Guardian, Wall Street Journal, New Republic, New York
Times Lens Blog, Monocle, COURRiER Japon, Al Jazeera, National,
Washington Post, New York Times, Time Lightbox, Boston Globe,
CNN, Aeon Magazine, Jerusalem Report, Beirut Daily Star,
Business Week, and the academic journal: Jadaliyya. Clients
include Riwaq, the National, Bloomberg, UNDP, UNRWA, UNESCO,
USAID, and the Said Foundation. Tanya received an honorable
mention for the 2012 FotoVisura grant, the 2011 SND Silver Award
for her Gaza story “A Life Less Ordinary,” the 2007 Clarion Award for
coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah War for Bloomberg and the 2006
Global Health Council award for humanitarian photography with
her Darfur coverage.
Wafa Hourani was born in Hebron in 1979 and has been
working on what he calls his Future Cities Projects, the first
manifestation of which, “Qalandia 2047,” was exhibited in the 2007
Thessaloniki Biennial and again in Disorientation II by the Sharjah
Art Foundation. The artist has since made two further versions—
“Qalandia 2067” (2008) and “Qalandia 2087” (2009)—all three
major installation works recreating in miniature the Palestinian
refugee camp Qalandia one hundred years after significant dates in
Palestinian history: 1947 the date of the establishment of the State
of Israel, 1967 the occupation after the Arab-Israeli Six Day War,
and 1987 the first Intifada. Qalandia is notorious as the site of the
checkpoint dividing Ramallah and Jerusalem. Hourani studied at
the Ecole d’Art et de Cinéma of Tunis (1998–2001) and while he has
worked with both film and photography, since 2006 photography has
become a tool to use as a collaged element in his three-dimensional
works. Hourani’s work has been shown in the Istanbul Biennial
(2009), Disorientation II, Abu Dhabi (2009), Saatchi Gallery,
London (2008), and the Thessaloniki Biennial (2007). Hourani
currently lives and works in Ramallah.
Curator Bio
fiction and reality. Recent solo exhibitions include: the Turku Art
Museum in Finland, Photographic Center in Copenhagen, Galerie
Anne de Villepoix in Paris, Kulturhuset in Stockholm, Lawrie
Shabibi in Dubai, Sabrina Amrani in Madrid and DEPO in Istanbul.
Sansour’s work has been featured in the biennials of Istanbul,
Busan and Liverpool. She has exhibited at venues such as Tate
Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; LOOP, Seoul; Al Hoash,
Jerusalem; Queen Sofia Museum, Madrid; Centre for Photography,
Sydney; Cornerhouse, Manchester; Townhouse, Cairo; Maraya Arts
Centre, Sharjah, UAE; Empty Quarter, Dubai; Galerie Nationale
de Jeu de Paume, Paris; Iniva, London; Institut du Monde Arabe,
Paris; Third Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, China; Louisiana
Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark; House of World Cultures,
Berlin, and MOCA, Hiroshima. Sansour currently lives and works in
London, UK.
Mary Evangelista is the director of ArtPalestine International.
She has many years’ experience as a critic and curator. Her past
exhibitions have included Art New Zealand, a touring exhibition
of contemporary Maori and New Zealand artists, two exhibitions
of contemporary Israeli Art, A Thousand and One Nights, an
exhibition of Palestinian art in New York City, and the exhibition
Designing a Nation’s Capitol at New Orleans Museum of Art. As
a critic, she has worked for publications including ARTNews,
Saturday Review, and Newsday.
Amer Shomali uses art, digital media, and technology as tools
to explore and interact with the sociopolitical scene in Palestine
focusing on the creation and reuse of Palestinian iconography. He
holds an MA in Animation from Bournemouth University in the
United Kingdom and a BA in Architecture from Birzeit University,
Palestine. He was born in Kuwait in 1981, and is currently based in
Ramallah, Palestine.
Mary Tuma was born in California in 1961 to a native Californian
mother of Irish descent and a Palestinian father. She began
sewing and crocheting with her mother at an early age. Her love
of these processes led her to begin her formal study of art as an
apprentice at Beautiful Arts Hall in Kerdassa, Egypt, where she
learned to weave tapestries. Later, she earned a Bachelor’s degree
in Costume and Textile Design from the University of California at
Davis, and then went on to study women’s fashion design at the
Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. In 1994, she earned
an MFA in Fine Art from the University of Arizona. In 1997, she
began teaching art at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte,
where she now serves as an Associate Professor and the head
of the Fibers Program in the Department of Art & Art History.
Tuma’s work has been shown, nationally and internationally, in
such venues as the Crocker Art Museum, The Maruki Gallery in
Hiroshima, The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, AlKahf Gallery in Bethlehem, The Cheongju International Craft
Biennial, the Station Museum in Houston and Contemporary
Projects in Kuwait City. Her work has appeared in Contemporary
Practices, Art in America, Dar Al-Hayat, The New York Times,
The Christian Science Monitor, Counterpunch, NYArts, Mother
Jones, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Jordan Star, among
others. She currently lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Mohammed Musallam was born in Gaza in 1974 after his
family had been dislocated from historic Palestine as a consequence
of the 1948 war. He holds a BFA in Painting from Al Najah University
and an MFA in Painting from Helwan University, Cairo. He currently
resides in Gaza and works there as a lecturer of “Painting and the
History of Palestinian Arts” at the College of Arts, Al Aqsa University.
Larissa Sansour was born in 1973 in East Jerusalem, Palestine,
and studied fine arts in London, New York, and Copenhagen.
Her work is interdisciplinary, immersed in the current political
dialogue, and utilizes video, photography, installation, book form,
and the internet. Central to her work is the tug and pull between
Bios
Bios
20, 21
Acknowledgments
ArtPalestine International gratefully thanks all of our supporters,
our advisory committee, Whitebox Art Center, Mark Hachem
Gallery, A.M. Qattan Foundation, Alwan for the Arts, Taymour
Grahne Gallery, and the Alliance for Global Justice.
How Green Was My Valley is produced by ArtPalestine
International, a New York-based non-profit organization dedicated
to contemporary Palestinian art, and has been organized with
the assistance of an international advisory committee of scholars,
cultural practitioners, and philanthropists.
Whitebox
Art Center
329 Broome St.
New York, NY
whiteboxnyc.org
Advisory committee — Mona Aboelnaga Kanaan, Dore Ashton,
Kamal Boullata, Najwan Darwish, Edward DeCarbo, Allen Frame,
Raouf Halaby, Fawz Kabra, Lara Khaldi, Moukhtar Kocache,
Suzanne Landau, Janice Oresman, Henrik Placht, Barry Rosen,
Stephen David Ross, Samuel Sachs II, Max Schumann, Patterson
Sims, Beth Stryker, Berta Walker.
Curator — Mary Evangelista
Partner — Mark Hachem Gallery
Venues — Whitebox Art Center, Alwan for the Arts
Program Coordinators — Joseph Audeh, Ye Qin Zhu
Program Officer — Lauren Gianni
Press/Advertising — George Brust, Courtney Yoshimura
Graphic Design — Will Work for Good
Supporters — Alwan for the Arts, Maha Alami, Mona Bashir,
Thomas W. and Kamala C. Buckner, Hester Diamond, Joan Dickson,
Digital 2 Media, Alisha Downey, Allen Frame, Mirene Ghossein,
Mark Hachem Gallery, Raouf J. Halaby, Connor Hurley, Mona
Aboelnaga Kanaan, Anne Kelsey, Barbara and Stuart Kreisberg,
Pingree Louchheim, Craig and Deirdre Macnab, Ian Macnab,
MH Art and Frame, Alexander and Paula Miller, Neil and Lynne
Miller, Read and Jane Moffett, Yigal Ozeri, Michael Rohatyn, Barry
Rosen, Alice Rothchild and Daniel Klein, Isam Salah, Mr. and Mrs.
William Schrenk, Patricia Shippee, Tanoreen Restaurant and
Caterers, Berta Walker, George Yazbek, Valerie Evans-Freke, Chase
Paskowich, Yvonne Camaleon, Philippa Blair, and Ian l.c.v.
Supporter list incomplete
Acknowledgments
Contact
ArtPalestine
International
artpalestine.org
22, 23
Mohamed Abusal
Tarek Al-Ghoussein
Mohammed Al Hawajri
Joseph Audeh
Samira Badran
Taysir Batniji
Rana Bishara
Haitham Ennasr
Tanya Habjouqa
Wafa Hourani
Mohammed Musallam
Larissa Sansour
Amer Shomali
Mary Tuma
Curated by
Mary Evangelista
Apr 3
— 27
2014