Page 46 - Issue 72
P. 46
V O L .1 E L I T E ISSUE 72
That’s proof that art outlives violence,
oppression and our own mortality, it lives
on to tell a story that’s bursting with
emotions for generations to come. It
eternalizes heritages and cultures and stands
boldly in the face of erasure. In all its forms
and shapes, art remains, because it is not
just made, it is lived and what’s lived
through art will forever be immortal. Refaat
Alareer left behind verses of defiance to the
world declaring that “If I must die, you must Yet art cannot be summed to the threads
live to tell my story.” weaved, nor confined to brushstrokes on
This defiance of erasure takes many shapes, soil. It breathes in the cadence of poetry, in
sometimes subtle as a stitch and sometimes the stubborn melodies sung in exile, in the
radical as turning the land itself into art. stories whispered across generations. Poetry
Painter Sliman Mansour was forced to find for instance, became a declaration of
a way to make art when Israeli restrictions existence, a defiant act of being. In
made it impossible to get art supplies, that’s Darwish’s words: “Write down: I am an
when he turned to the soil itself, grinding Arab. Robbed of my ancestors’ vineyards.
earth into pigment so that the land became And of the land cultivated by me and all my
both canvas and testimony. children.” And if the land could speak it
In this act, art was not only made about would echo his hunting words “If the Olive
Palestine but of Palestine, ensuring that even Trees knew the hands that planted them, their
oil would become tears.”. As such, Poetry
under siege, identity could not be severed
becomes more than just lyricism but a living
from its roots. His famous painting Jamal
archive that records loss while asserting
al-Mahamel, is a living testimony of the
identity and the Palestinian voice across
Palestinians unbreakable endurance even
time.
under endless burden, as he brilliantly
converged the material and the metaphor. At the end of the day, resilience is not just
Creativity here about enduring the present, it is also about
ceases to be a envisioning a future worth enduring for.
luxury and Every embroidered dress, every painted
rather becomes olive tree, every poem about the land is not
a necessity, a just a tribute to what was lost but a sketch
way to bind of what will be reclaimed the day after
identity to the liberation. Empires fall, regimes collapse,
earth when maps are redrawn, but art survives. The
politics and Romans no longer rule, but their mosaics
force try to remain. The Ottomans are gone, but their
uproot it. calligraphy adorns the walls. And one day,
This can also be seen in Palestinian graffiti the same will be said for Palestinian tatreez,
and mural art which is a mockingly Darwish’s verses, Mansour’s paintings, and
powerful tool of resistance and cultural the anonymous graffiti in the streets of
assertation against the backdrop of the Ramallah, an undying heritage that 46
Israeli Occupation. cannot be erased.
