Ramallah Art Fair returns with theme of resilience

The Zawyeh Art Gallery, organizer and sole venue of the Ramallah Art Fair, wants people to know that the event’s name is something of a misnomer. Yes, pieces in the newly opened Fourth Edition are on sale – and at particularly affordable prices – but here, the market takes a back seat. This is first and foremost a showcase of the Palestinian story.

This year’s Ramallah Art Fair (RAF), titled “Voices of Resilience,” features more than 100 works of art in various media created by 35 artists who were born, lived in Palestine or settled abroad. The works are on display at Zawiya’s flagship store (the gallery also has a branch in Dubai) and can be viewed online. However, gallery manager Yusef Hussein said collectors had reserved much of the collection well before the Dec. 7 opening. The exhibition lasts until January 18th.

“The work from these artists’ studios is powerful and pure,” Hussein said. “We have a huge network of collectors around the world who want to see work by Palestinian artists. The momentum has been building since December [of 2023]”.

“We want to encourage the younger generation here,” he added. As a result, prices are cheap, with most prices around $5,000. Works by the best-known artists in the exhibition, such as Sliman Mansour and Vera Tamari, are priced below their market value.

For the first time, the fair is divided into three sections: Contemporary, Photographic and Rare, with the final section focusing on the work of influential Palestinian artists, including modernist pioneer and historian Ismail Shammout and his deceased painter and educator Fathi Ghaben. Gaza in February after being denied medical care.

Art reflects the generational divide. The oldest works contain anecdotes and collective accounts of the Nakba events, the violent displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. For example, Mustafa Al-Hallaj (born in Salama in 1938) resettled in Damascus and later Beirut before returning to the Syrian capital during the 1982 Lebanon War. Al-Hallaj lost some 25,000 of his prints during the bombing of Beirut; one of his surviving works is on display in the exhibition. His practice is diverse—prints, murals, etchings, sculptures—and has a melancholy palette. In an untitled black-and-white paper print from 1969, a woman surrounded by foliage raises one foot, as if preparing to take a step forward and disappear from sight: more myth than iconography.

Al-Hallaj’s prints provide an interesting contrast with the work of Nabil Anani, also on display. Many of his mixed media works are busy, bisected, and colorful. road to freedom“Ink Woodcut” is a mini-epic about endurance under occupation. This piece, created in 2004, unfortunately proved to be timeless.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which turns one this October, has caused widespread destruction and death, leading human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to declare Israel’s actions a genocide.

Since October 7, 2023, settler violence has also increased in the West Bank, where Ramallah is located.

The first Ramallah Art Fair was held during the Covid-19 pandemic, but every edition has to overcome exceptional circumstances due to the impact of the occupation. The fourth edition of the show was originally planned to open at the end of 2023, but these plans were shelved after October 7. “This was a difficult decision. We are very proud of this event,” Hussain said. At the time, Zawiya Gallery “redefined its ethical role as a platform for these artists to speak out and as a way to generate income for artists in Gaza.”

In January, the gallery opened a new group show of political posters, an art form closely associated with the Palestinian liberation movement. By the summer, Hussain and his team decided to move forward with construction of the fourth RAF, although assembling the piece, especially the historical parts, was an unprecedented task. The logistics of transporting art (or anything, even the gallery itself) from Gaza to the West Bank are difficult at any time of year.

“Before October we can bring art from Gaza [to the West Bank]but we can never return these fragments,” Hussein said. This has become a glimmer of hope, as some artists who lost their studios in Gaza this year can still find some safe works in Ramallah. Other artists have managed to get artworks from being Smuggled out of the besieged zone, such as Ayman Essa, Hussein said he brought the 2023 painting to Egypt blue portrait. Elsa’s works in the exhibition all depict an elegant woman bathed in blues and reds, seemingly detached from any discernible narrative.

Every piece of art here is imbued with resilience, but this isn’t necessarily an exhibition about war. Rather, it is about the world as these 35 people experienced it.

The paintings of Malik Abu Salameh, an artist born in Bethlehem in 1998, recreate childhood memories, with landscapes blurred in shadow, like dissipated dreams. Ahmad Salameh and Rehaf Batniji are two photographers who shoot with Yaqeen Yamani, both focusing on work and leisure. Salameh, an artist and founder of the MyStory project, gave three of his works apt titles On the Gaza Coast. In these waters, people fish, children play, and spectacular sunsets turn the sky orange. By contrast, Patnage’s beach photos are sombre and serene, making them feel more vulnerable. In one, a lone child looks out to sea.

One of the great strengths of the exhibition is the dialogue between emerging and classic artists; one introduction inevitably leads to another. For example, the most experimental works reference or layer historical elements directly onto mixed media. Yamani, one of the youngest artists here (born in 1997, Jericho), reinterprets Mansour’s work in her performance photography series “Suitcases”. Mansour’s iconic 1973 painting The suffering camel Depicts an old Palestinian man carrying all of Jerusalem on his back. Yamani carries on Mansoor’s theme of displacement and dignity, fitting a young man with a suitcase. He sat in it, dragged it, even held it as if it were precious, despite its weight.

“There was a poster of Slimane Mansour in the house I grew up in, and now we’re in the same exhibition,” Mahmoud Alhaj, an artist from Gaza, told us art news. “Mansour and Nabil Anani didn’t even meet me, they didn’t know they were teaching me, just through their art. They encouraged me to keep coming back to this issue – the Palestinian issue.”

A prolific photographer, filmmaker and digital artist who has exhibited extensively in Palestine and abroad, Alhaj questions the architecture of colonial violence and its intergenerational impact on Palestinian geography. Describing his practice as “akin to recycling,” he creates collages of archival images and vibrant ephemera that testify to the changes suffered by Palestinian cities and their inhabitants. exist Fragile No. 6 Digital photos of residential buildings covered in pills illustrate the growing abuse of over-the-counter drugs in Palestine, especially among young men.

Alhaj called from France, where he said there was a distance between people there and the reality in Gaza. “They just look The destruction of Gaza,” he explained. “They had to get closer to see and hear the story. “

This, he says, is the importance of events like the Ramallah Art Fair. “Artists from Jerusalem faced Israeli soldiers just like artists from Gaza, but in a different way,” he said. “We have the same enemy, but the art we create is different. You need all of that to see the full picture.”