Zawyeh Gallery is excited to announce its participation in Intersect 21, a virtual art fair featuring art, design, and photography by 21 galleries in Southern California, the Middle East, and North Africa.
Join us for the Opening Event at 12pm Eastern on February 16, the Opening will feature an introduction and overview by Intersect Art and Design’s Managing Director Becca Hoffman, CEO Tim von Gal, and curatorial advisor Rebecca Anne Proctor, followed by special video highlights from exhibitors and cultural partners. Register HERE to receive information about how to join via Zoom.
Intersect 21 will be live at Intersect2021.com from February 16 through 22, 2021 and on Artsy from February 16 through March 15, 2021.
Intersect 21 Art and Design comprises three art fairs: Intersect Aspen (formerly Art Aspen), Intersect Chicago (formerly SOFA Chicago), and Intersect 21 Palm Springs (formerly Art Palm Springs). Intersect 21 Art and Design’s core values include working with integrity, decency, credibility, and transparency. Through art, and the diverse voices of our exhibitors and their artists, we encourage discussions that promote social awareness and foster positive change. Intersect is a partnership of brothers Tim and Dirk von Gal, who are event industry veterans with more than 50 years of combined experience creating successful trade shows and conferences for business, consumer, and art industry sectors. The three fairs had been under the umbrella of Tim von Gal’s former company Urban Expositions (founded in 1995), which was acquired by Clarion in 2015. The von Gal brothers’ launch of Intersect in April 2020 brings the fairs back under their management once again. Intersect 21 is part of vGMgt LLC, which is a team of dedicated professionals focused on customer service, integrity, and the experiential value of Intersect 21 Art and Design. Managing Director Becca Hoffman, who joined Intersect Art and Design in April 2020, was the Director of the Outsider Art Fair from 2013 – 2020, and was formerly the director of Peter Findlay Gallery, and Andrew Edlin Gallery. Hoffman received her B.A. in Fine Art Photography from Dartmouth where she helped start the first student art gallery and worked at the Hood Museum of Art. From there, Hoffman achieved her M.A. in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s in London.
Nabil Anani, In Pursuit of Utopia #17 (2020), mixed media on canvas, 100 x 100 cm
Yazan Abu Salameh, The Master (2020), mixed media on paper, 75 x 110 cm
Yazan Abu Salameh, Maze (2020), mixed media on paper, 50 x 65 cm
Yazan Abu Salameh, On the Abyssal Edge (2020), mixed media on paper, 45 x 75 cm
Asma Ghanem, Freedom Bird (2020), mixed media on paper, 21 x 14 cm
Asma Ghanem, 12'len (2020), mixed media on paper, 23 x 33 cm
Asma Ghanem, Sunflower Black Girl (2020), mixed media on paper, 43 x 33 cm
Ruba Salameh, Ants Work (2005), acrylic on canvas, D120 cm
Ruba Salameh, Lisa (2020), acrylic on linen, 87 x 133 cm
Khaled Hourani, Picasso in Palestine #2, 2019, oil on canvas, 125 x 170 cm
Khaled Hourani, Picasso in Palestine (291 Church Street - New York, NY 10013 ), 2019, photo print (edition 1/5), 80 x 110 cm
Jack Persekian, New Gate, 2017, Fine Art Paper, 35 × 55 cm
Jack Persekian, Jaffa Gate 1917, 2017, Fine Art Paper, 57 × 35 cm
Rana Samara (born 1985, Jerusalem) is a Palestinian artist and a graduate of the International Art Academy, Ramallah (2015). Samara grew up in a typical Palestinian family. In her words: “I spent most of my childhood and teenage years observing and analyzing social and gender relations. I came to understand how precious, yet also suffocating women’s roles as carers and nurturers can be.”
Samara’s current body of work – Intimate Space – explores societal norms, sexuality, gender roles, and other factors associated with modern Palestinian life. Her work focuses on the less obvious factors that underpin the daily lives of women who reside in overcrowded refugee camps and rural communities – women whose lives continue to be blighted both by conservative traditions and the exigencies of life under occupation.
Focusing on marital intimacy, Samara demystifies many social taboos and translates these onto large, bold and colorful canvasses that are both remarkable social statements and beautiful artistic constructs. Frank conversations with women form the backbone of her work that transcends the private space into the realm of the public. Often depicting the aftermath of sexual encounters, Samara’s paintings are remarkable visual metaphors of the lives of Palestinian women existing in restricted environments, cramped and constrained by internal traditions and by external forces.
Samara has participated in a number of exhibitions including Contemporary Istanbul, Turkey, 2019; Art Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2019; Beirut Art Fair, Lebanon, 2017; and Art Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2017. In addition to several local solo exhibitions in Ramallah and Jerusalem.
She investigates the social contexts of sexuality in which she draws inspiration predominantly from personal encounters with women she meets: “I have intimate and continuous conversations with them about virginity, intimacy, sexual desire, gender norms, their convictions and relationships and roles vis à vis the younger generations and these conversations form the cornerstone of my research.” Samara’s works span across diverse mediums such as film, video, installation, and embroidery but her current focus is large-scale paintings. Samara graduated in 2015 from the International Academy of Art in Ramallah.
Rana Samara, Intimate Space IX, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 170x290 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #17, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 142 x 350 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #10, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 208 x 323 cm
Rana Samara, Lego, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 214 x 250 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #20, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 200 x 345 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #21, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 200 x 490 cm
Rana Samara, Super Mario, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 213 x 233 cm
Rana Samara, Prosthetics, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 207 x 530 cm
September 12 – September 15, 2019 Istanbul, Turkey
Palestinian Intimate Space Exposed in Contemporary Istanbul
Female artist explores the subjects of intimacy and desire under occupation
Breaking taboos and venturing into unexplored territory, Rana Samara is a Palestinian artist born in Jerusalem who investigates the social contexts of sexuality within Palestinian society in her paintings. Following the success of her participation in Art Dubai 2017 and in Art Beirut 2017, Samara’s work debuts at Contemporary Istanbul 2019. The works exhibited by Zawyeh Gallery (BOOTH B203, 12 – 15 September 2019) expose what appears to be typical domestic scenes, but on closer inspection small details become large clues – lingerie peeks out from beneath rumpled sheets, belts hang from the bedstead, a half-used pack of Viagra linger – telling signs, which provide a narrative for the foregone ‘crime’ or proscribed act.
Intimate spaces are translated into large-scale canvases, and continuous frank conversations with women become the backbone of her work, thus transcending the private sphere into the realm of the public. In Samara’s words: “Intimate stories and female wisdom through experience are the sources of inspiration for me and for my practice.” She continues: “That said, perhaps my own experiences are a latent inspiration too.”
This inspiration for this particular subject began after a walk in Al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah, which she recalls as such: “I began wondering about the sex life of couples living in such condensed spaces that affords them almost no privacy. This privacy is especially difficult to achieve considering the large size of most Palestinian families and the cramped proximity in which neighbors and families live to each other.
These bedrooms are familiar domestic spaces, but in these paintings, they are transformed into the repository of social neurosis and taboos that Samara seeks to scrutinize and demystify. Virginity, intimacy, sexual desire, gender, social norms –subjects, which are so pertinent in both the female realm and the society at large but they are often hidden, unexplored or even dismissed at an artistic level in the context of a nation still struggling under years of military occupation.
Samara grew up in a typical Palestinian family. In her words: “I spent most of my childhood and teenage years observing and analyzing social and gender relations. I came to understand how precious, yet also suffocating women’s roles as carers and nurturers can be.”
She investigates the social contexts of sexuality in which she draws inspiration predominantly from personal encounters with women she meets: “I have intimate and continuous conversations with them about virginity, intimacy, sexual desire, gender norms, their convictions and relationships and roles vis à vis the younger generations and these conversations form the cornerstone of my research.” Samara’s works span across diverse mediums such as film, video, installation, and embroidery but her current focus is large-scale paintings. Samara graduated in 2015 from the International Academy of Art in Ramallah.
Palestinian Art Contemporary Istanbul Palestinian Art Contemporary Istanbul
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #9, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 170 × 290 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #20, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 210 x 340 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #17, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 150 × 365 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #18, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 208 x 264 cm
Zawyeh Gallery’s art fair selection captures diverse works by emerging and established artists from Palestine and the diaspora, as the only Palestinian Gallery represented at the art fair. These works are the personal aesthetic elucidations of individual artists whose lives are intertwined by their collective memory and experiences as Palestinian artists enduring similar fates relating to disenfranchisement and loss.
The following are biographical information on the participating artists:
Nabil Anani (b.1943, Latroun, Palestine) is one of the most prominent Palestinian artists working today. He is considered by many as a key founder of the contemporary Palestinian art movement.
Tayseer Barakat was born in Gaza in 1959 and completed his arts education in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1983. After completing his studies, he moved to Ramallah where he has since based – both teaching and creating art.
Hosni Radwan was born in Baghdad in 1955. He studied fine arts at the University of Baghdad specializing in graphics. He held a number of solo exhibitions in Iraq, Lebanon, Cyprus, Japan and Palestine.
Vera Tamari was born in Jerusalem in 1945. She received a B.A. in fine arts in 1966 from the Beirut College for Women (now the Lebanese American University) in Lebanon.
Shada Safadi is a visual artist born in Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights. She finished a two-year-class in painting and etching at Adham Ismail Institute in Damascus in 2003, before she joined the department of painting at Damascus University, in which she graduated from with a degree in fine arts in 2005
Galleries at MAS Palestinian Art Galleries at MAS Palestinian Art
Tayseer Barakat, The Dance, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 41 x 47 cm
Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #15, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 67 x 67 cm
Vera Tamari, Like in a Dream, 2014, watercolour on paper, 30 x 40 cm
Rafat Asad, Marj Ibn Amer #12, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 80 x 90 cm
Nabil Anani, Kobar, 2013, mixed media on paper, 65 x 50 cm
Shada Safadi, Limitless, 2018, etching, monotype, 35 x 35 cm
March 20 – March 23, 2019 Booth C12, Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai
Rana Samara’s War Games takes us to the imaginative worlds of refugee children living in Gaza and elsewhere in the region. Exploring the social and political locked in a child’s dream or rather nightmare, Samara highlights the plight of children in a turbulent region dreaming to fix their own worlds and being able to simply “play”.
Dispossessed and traumatised by military war and occupations, children living in camps dreaming of far away life were asked by Samara, to draw their re-occurring dreams. Unsurprisingly, they illustrated personal stories that revolved predominantly around “play”. Samara translates those drawings on large stretches of canvases using striking bright colors and vivid ornaments as if she is trying to reflect the size and value of life-details found in those dreams in her huge scaled colorful paintings. Prosthetic implants, an empty Mackintosh chocolate tin full of thread coils, huge Lego bricks and various computer games are a glimpse of what lies behind intimate personal stories in which she delves.
Children dream of games they yearn to play and objects that bring them the feelings of safety and comfort within one’s own home and family, re-occurs to become part of life long memories and influences. It is no wonder that Samara addresses this topic in particular as an adult. For it is her own experience as a child that sparked this project. Samara started this project by drawing “SuperMario”, stemming from her own childhood experience when Israeli soldiers stormed her own home and kicked her and her family out and ransacked the house. Samara never forgot that they disturbed a “Super Mario” game that she was playing preventing her to complete it and losing a “life” on screen eventually.
While re-occurring dreams reflect trauma and wounds that can leave an indelible mark on adult life, dreaming to play simply reflects the dire lives of these children born and raised in “transient” homes that become permanently “transitional”. Makeshift structures that houses impoverished and densely packed populations of refugees, lack the basic infrastructure of services, with no adequate personal space that allows children sufficient room to play.
Samara’s previous project Intimate Space, explored the intimate and social aspects of living in refugee camps. In War Games, Samara continues this pursuit in bringing fundamental and intimate issues facing refugees into the public realm, unearthing subjects that are rarely explored artistically.
Rana Samara Art Dubai Rana Samara Art Dubai
Rana Samara, PUBG, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 210 x 245 cm
Rana Samara, Beit Byoot, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 207 x 500 cm
Rana Samara, Mackintosh Tin, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 157 x 150 cm
Rana Samara, Prosthetics, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 207 x 530 cm
Rana Samara, Super Mario, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 213 x 233 cm
Rana Samara, Candy Crush, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 213 x 167 cm
Rana Samara, Lego, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 214 x 250 cm
Rana Samara, Harb Darb, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 206 x 176 cm
In Rana Samara’s Intimate Space we witness what appears to be a typical domestic scene, but on closer inspection small details reveal telling clues – lingerie peeks out from beneath rumpled sheets, belts hang from the bedstead, a half-used pack of Viagra lingers – signs which tell a story of what has gone before, the desultory evidence of intimacy. These bedrooms are familiar domestic spaces, but in Samara’s paintings they are transformed into repositories of social neuroses and taboos that the artist both seeks to scrutinize and demystify. Virginity. Intimacy. Sexual desire. Gender. Social norms. These issues, so pertinent in both the female realm and the society at large, are often hidden, unexplored or even dismissed at an artistic level in the context of a nation still struggling under years of military occupation. Her artwork affirms the feminist conviction that the personal is the political. Intimate spaces are translated into large-scale canvases, and continuous frank conversations with women become the backbone of her work, transcending the private sphere and placing it in the realm of the public. Samara’s work challenges these notions of not only what women can discuss but what issues are valid in society as she invites the viewer to intrude in the daily lives and experiences of women towards greater empathy and understanding. The light and playful mood of her paintings also demand our reconsideration of these sites of intimacy as a place of shame. For her, issues of sex and sexuality must become public discourse, and so public engagement is of utmost necessity. For Virginity Handkerchiefs groups of men and women were invited to consider their understanding of a tradition whereby a blood-stained handkerchief must be presented as ‘proof’ of a woman’s maidenhood on her wedding night by producing their own ‘virginity’ handkerchiefs. In doing so, the barrier between the private and the public is dissolved and thus the artwork and its creative process become a site of candid discussion and analysis of social norms. As a multidisciplinary artist, Samara’s works embrace diverse mediums such as film, video installation, sculpture, embroidery, and painting. Mundane household objects are reclaimed – handkerchiefs and oven mitts – and a story in the ordinary materializes, one that alludes to both the female wisdom that influences her practice and the ‘suffocating [female] roles’ that she witnessed as a child growing up. Samara is one of Palestine’s finest young talents with work that bridges many disciplines. Her commitment to art, subject matter, and social issues pushes the boundaries of society’s conventions and progresses her work from an exploration of the self into an awakening of dialogue born from personal and collective experience.
Rana Samara Art Dubai Rana Samara Art Dubai Rana Samara Art Dubai
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #10, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 208 x 323 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #13, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 210 x 217 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #3, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 175 x 200 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #9, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 170 x 290 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #12, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 163 x 303 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #5, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 171 x 201 cm
Statement
I have always been intrigued by both the stories and untold silences women transfer from one generation to another, in particular from mothers to daughters. Women hide great stories and if you give them the opportunity they will make great storytellers. Intimate stories and female wisdom are the sources of inspiration for me and for my practice. That said, perhaps my own experiences are a latent inspiration too. I grew up in a typical Palestinian family and consequently spent most of my childhood and teenage years observing and analyzing social and gender relations. I came to understand how precious, yet also suffocating women’s roles as carers and nurturers can be. Women, gender and sexual relations comprise the backbone of my work. It all started after a walk in Al-Amari refugee camp where I began wondering about the sex life of couples living in such condensed spaces that affords them almost no privacy. This privacy is especially difficult to achieve considering the large size of most Palestinian families and the cramped proximity in which neighbours and families live to each other. In my research I investigate the social contexts of sexuality and rely on the personal testimonies of the women I met. I had conversations with them about virginity, intimacy, sexual desire, gender norms, and their convictions, relationships and roles vis a vis the younger generations. These conversations form the cornerstone of my research for my practice in which I utilize various forms including painting, video, installation and also embroidery. Bedrooms reflect a woman’s social class, sexual life, and the amount of privacy they have – and at times can even resemble a crime scene. I explore the question of where we are positioned as a viewer to these rooms and how through voyeuristically intruding on the scene we are able to sense the lives of the women who inhabit and perform their sexuality in these rooms and the relationship between place and social norms. As Palestinian society is predominantly conservative, virginity is extremely important and proof of it is still sought by the groom’s family. This proof usually takes the form of a blood stained handkerchief that is shown to the women in the family after the wedding night. For this project I gave handkerchiefs to different men and women and asked them to embroider upon them their views and understanding of this longstanding tradition. Working across different mediums and forms enables me to explore intimate and taboo questions of female sexuality in my society. I wonder what kind of intimate situations are born in a space and how many stories there are to share and I am keen to explore how this manifests in different places, contexts and corners of public space.
There’s a new artist that’s turning heads in the Palestinian contemporary art scene. Rana Samara paints Palestinian bedrooms — post-sex.
It’s a bold departure from the usual Palestinian artistic tropes — the olive trees of the West Bank, the trappings of traditional Palestinian heritage, the scenes of exile, war and Israeli military occupation.
“We have a lot of Palestinian artists that work on the Palestinian struggle … but Rana’s works are different,” said Ziad Anani, owner of Zawyeh Gallery in Ramallah, where Samara’s paintings are receiving their first professional exhibition. “She likes the intimate space.”
Samara, a 30-year-old mother of three and a recent graduate of the International Academy of Art Palestine in Ramallah, paints in the style of Matisse or David Hockney — big colourful still-life portraits. In one, an orange peel has fallen on the floor next to the bed, and underwear hangs from the bedpost.
Rana Samara says she became interested in painting intimate scenes, post-sex, after visiting a friend in a Palestinian refugee camp where there’s little privacy. “I started questioning like, how did people make sex? How did they sleep together?”
Samara, who’s based in Ramallah, became interested in scenes of intimacy as a second-year art student, after she visited a friend living in a West Bank refugee camp.
“I stopped in the front of the camp and I started questioning like, how did people make sex? How did they sleep together?” Samara said.
There’s very little privacy in West Bank refugee camps, crowded concrete shantytowns where Palestinians ended up after they were uprooted from their homes in the 1948 war that led to Israel’s founding.
“Then I started to meet women in the camp and ask them the question, how did you sleep with your husband? It’s a horrible space, because the buildings (are) next to each other,” Samara said. “One woman told me that her husband put his hand in her mouth to keep her voice down.”
She interviewed women in refugee camps and elsewhere in the West Bank about marital intimacy. Some women would invite her to come to their homes after they had slept with their partners; Samara would take photographs of the room as inspiration for her paintings.
One painting shows a pack of Viagra in the corner. In another one, she painted the patterns from the lingerie of a woman she interviewed.
Some of Rana Samara’s fellow artists said to her, we are Palestinians. Sex is the last thing we should talk about. Her response was “why?”
Some of her Palestinian artist colleagues tell her she should be painting about more crucial things, like the Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank, she said.
“Many artists, like, give you critique. ‘You are a woman. Why do you want to talk about sex? We are Palestinians. … Sex, I think, it’s last thing we should talk about.’ Why? Why [is it] not an issue?” Samara said. “Yeah, it’s an issue. We can talk about it. But I think I talk about it in a polite way. Not in a very rude way.”
While Samara is breaking taboos as a Palestinian female artist dealing with such intimate subject matter, it did not seem to faze people at the opening at Zawyeh Gallery. It’s the first of three contemporary art galleries to be established in the West Bank in the past few years, part of a growing effort to market Palestinian artists to collectors in the West Bank and around the world. The works of other established and emerging local artists are on exhibit at the gallery, too.
It was an impressive turnout at the opening. Among those there were Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi and a prominent Palestinian businessman and his wife who are contemporary art collectors. There were pastries and wine.
Another artist, Juhaina Habibi Kandalaft, exhibited paintings featuring women in traditional embroidered dress. Her works reflect Palestinian pride and nostalgia for the past. Kandalaft was born in Nazareth, in what is today Israel, in 1947, one year before Palestinians were expelled or fled in the war that led to Israel’s establishment.
Her works feature a more traditional depiction of Palestinian women, but she approved of Samara’s more intimate portraits. “It is not necessary always to talk about Palestinian core issues,” she said. “Palestinians have to talk about life as well.”
Rana Samara’s paintings are about sex and Palestinians’ intimate lives. “I think I talk about it in a polite way. Not in a very rude way.”
Samara said she has been accepted to a master’s of fine arts program at the California Institute of the Arts, and is trying to raise funds to pay for it. Her dream is to exhibit her work at the Venice Biennale, the Olympics of the art world, as the official Palestinian representative.
By Daniel Estrin
“I have always been intrigued by both the stories and untold silences women transfer from one generation to another, in particular from mothers to daughters. Women hide great stories and if you give them the opportunity they will make great storytellers. Intimate stories and female wisdom through experience are the sources of inspiration for me and for my practice. That said, perhaps my own experiences are a latent inspiration too. I grew up in a typical Palestinian family and consequently spent most of my childhood and teenage years observing and analyzing social and gender relations. I came to understand how precious, yet also suffocating women’s roles as carers and nurturers can be.
“My first academic experience with the visual arts was at the Palestine Technical College in Ramallah where I completed a two-year diploma in graphic design. However the program did not fulfill my desire for knowledge. In the theory lectures we always touched upon Contemporary Art, and it made me want to explore this area in greater depth. I therefore applied to the International Academy of Art in Palestine to study BA Contemporary Visual Arts. It provided me with the opportunity to develop a broad scope in the understanding and practice of visual arts across the medium of photography, installation, painting, video, social intervention and theoretical studies.
“Women, gender and sexual relations comprise the backbone of my work; It all started after a walk in Al-Amari refugee camp where I began wondering about the sex life of couples living in such a condensed spaces that affords them almost no privacy. This privacy is especially difficult to achieve considering the large size of most Palestinian families and the cramped proximity in which neighbours and families live to each other. In my research I investigate the social contexts of sexuality in which I rely mostly on my personal relations with various women I met. I have intimate and continuous conversations with them about virginity, intimacy, sexual desire, gender norms, their convictions and relationships and roles vis à vis the younger generations and these conversations form the cornerstone of my research for my practice in which I utilize various forms including painting, video, installation and also embroidery. My practice currently focuses on painting, both for potential of the medium as well as its historical references and contexts.
“My current body of work focuses on the question of women’s bedrooms, which reflect a woman’s social class, sexual life, the amount of privacy they have and at times can even resemble a crime scene. I explore the question of where we are positioned as a viewer to these rooms and how through voyeuristically intruding on the scene we are able to sense the lives of the women who inhabit and perform their sexuality in these rooms and the relationship between place and social norms. Currently I am working on body of work which focuses on the question of virginity. As Palestinian society is predominantly conservative, virginity is extremely important and proof of it is still sought by the groom’s family. This proof usually takes the form of a blood stained handkerchief that is shown to the women in the family after the wedding night. For this project I gave 50 handkerchiefs to different men and women and asked them to embroider upon them their views and understanding of this longstanding tradition. Working across different mediums and forms enables me to explore intimate and taboo questions of female sexuality in my society.
“My recent research moves these above questions into the realm of public space and how it can become an intimate one within seconds. I wonder what kind of intimate situations are born in a space and how many stories there are to share and I am keen to explore how this manifests in different places, contexts and corners of public space.
“Since my graduation last year from the International Academy of Art in Palestine, I have continued to work on the above-mentioned themes in my artwork. I have recently showcased two of my artworks at the French-German cultural center in Ramallah in the exhibition “Disrupted Intimacies” which brought together a selection of artworks from the graduates of the International Academy of Art for the first time. The selected artworks focused on the above-mentioned conversations I had with women on the subject of social taboos – female sexuality, virginity, intimacy, sexual desire, and gender norms – and these were shown through the medium of large-scale painting of domestic spaces.
“I also taught part-time courses at the academy to first year students studying the BA in Contemporary Visual Art. I have now been accepted to study the MA in Fine Art and Theory in Northwestern University in Chicago and this has come at a pivotal point in my career where it will empower me in the development and evolution of my work.”
Rana Samara Palestinian Art Rana Samara Palestinian Art Rana Samara Palestinian Art Rana Samara Palestinian Art Rana Samara Palestinian Art Rana Samara Palestinian Art
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #13, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 210 x 217 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #5, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 171 x 201 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #12, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 163 x 303 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #9, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 170 x 290 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #3, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 175 x 200 cm
Rana Samara, Intimate Space #10, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 208 x 323 cm
“Our mission is to get Palestinian artists known around the world, this is very important. Palestinian artists are unique, our work is related to our struggle. Some artists use traditional Palestinian symbolism and explore our struggle for land and freedom, others look at personal struggles. Art offers people a relationship to Palestine that can’t be taken from the media.”
Ziad Anani is clearly very passionate about Palestinian art. The son of Palestinian artist Nabil Anani, Ziad Anani grew up “surrounded by art works”. In December 2013 he staged his first “open house” exhibition in the house in which he was raised. His vision was to create a space in Ramallah in which Palestinian artists could show and promote their work.
More than two years after the project began, and with the family now living elsewhere in the city, the original Anani family house is now known at Zawyeh Gallery (Corner Gallery), and Anani hosts regular exhibitions as well as representing several Palestinian artists commercially.
The current exhibition opened at Zawyeh on Saturday 18th January. ‘Crossroads’ brings together the work of 6 Palestinian artists and although not intentionally tied by a thematic link, exhibition curator Sulieman Mleahat believes that in common with much Palestinian art, the struggle for ‘identity’ is strongly evident in all the works on show:
“The ability to articulate their own personal story is the strength or success of an artist. In these works, ‘identity’ manifests itself in many ways – intimate struggles of women, internal societal issues, national and political struggles, family, rebirth and transition. Nobody lives in a bubble – that includes Palestinian artists and this is reflected through their work.”
Alongside its work with established Palestinian artists, Zawyeh is also working to support ‘new’ artists – those who have yet to be firmly established on the international art scene. The gallery is also building a permanent collection of its own, a project that Anani sees as an attempt “to keep an important collection of Palestinian art within the country”.
Refusing to accept politically imposed borders of division yet unable to physically reach various areas of historic Palestine, Anani faces many challenges in bringing together works and artists from such areas. He is therefore forced to rely on trusted contacts in various areas and the internet to view work, yet this collective focus is fundamental to Zawyeh’s mission:
“‘Palestine’ is an historical country with a very sad history. Over time we have lost so much space and so many landscapes, but we – Palestinians – can’t accept divisions between each other. Palestinian artists in ’48’ invite me to their studios but I cant get there, the same with Gaza. We are all Palestinian artists but we cannot get to each other.”
Crossroads Collective Palestinian Art Crossroads Collective Palestinian Art