Beyond Books: Reflections on the Dor Guez '40 Days' Exhibition at the Mosaic Rooms

Last week I went to see the artist Dor Guez's exhibition held at London's Mosaic Rooms. This is the first UK solo show by the artist who is both Christian Palestinian and Jewish Tunisian. Part of Mosaic Rooms' cultural project 'Disappearing Cities', the exhibition aims to bring to the forefront the experiences of the Christian Palestinian minority who remained in the State of Israel after the 1948 war. Guez addresses the impact this decision has had not only on the generation that lived through it but also on the subsequent generations who continue to live there. A minority that finds itself marginalised by the narratives of the region.

This is a very small exhibit consisting of two video installations ('40 Days' & 'Watermelons Under the Bed') in addition to several showcase tables displaying Palestinian Identity Cards and passports dating back to the British Mandate (1920-1948) and belonging to three generations of the Monayer family who are relatives of the artist himself. Hanging on the walls are a number of 'scanograms' (scanned archival images) from Guez's family album. To see a sample of these and to view the artist's work click  HERE.

The video installation '40 Days' - the family's mourning period when a loved one dies - is a 15-minute two-channel video  installation about the destroyed grave sites in the Christian Palestinian cemetery in the city of Lod. Tombstones charred and desecrated (a skull is visible in one photo) and where once there must have been a metal cross, the family have painted one on with black paint due to theft that is rampant in the area. The cemetery is unkempt exuding neglect and abandonment mirroring much of how the Christian community in the area feel. A people with little say in what happens politically in the volatile area around them - quite simply 'a minority within a minority' - trying to get by as best they can given the predicaments they are faced with.

The installation I found the more powerful was the video 'Watermelons Under the Bed'. In a mere eight minutes the artist manages to summarise what this whole exhibition is about: Personal identity and how to define it in a land rife with turmoil. An explanatory sign at the entrance to the room explains that 'the narrator in the video is Samih Monayer, second generation to the Israeli Occupation who recounts how his family had to adjust to their new life and how this has reflected on who he is today and how it has impacted on his own children as well'. A clip on YouTube, not shown at the exhibit, properly explains how the Monayer family view themselves and their situation. Click HERE to view.

'Watermelons Under the Bed', at first glance, seems a candid way for the Monayer family to talk about the family history. But on second and third viewing, you hear and notice other things: the voice of Samih's female relative (who we hear but do not see) instructing him not to speak of politics lest he jeopardise his job, Samih himself recalling his childhood unease when briefly attending the nearby Arab school and Samih's grandfather whose mood fluctuates between candid defiance and despondent resignation. Nobody is fully at ease and they all continually pause to think of what they are going to say next and how they are going to say it. This is a family who is the direct product of a conflict that carves its mark day after day and year after year on every Palestinian family's history and personal identity.

It would be interesting to know how the Palestinian Christians will judge these videos. Will they see it as one Christian family's attempt to justify the life they have chosen for themselves in Israel or will they take offence that the Monayer family should presume that all Christian Palestinians share their view? Another question that poses itself is should the Christian Palestinians have to explain themselves in the first place?

Exhibitions such as this one, although riddled with connotations, are important. In my opinion they serve as a reminder that time waits for no man and whether or not a permanent resolution to end the Israeli Palestinian conflict is near or far, we are forced to acknowledge the influence Israel's presence has already had on Palestinian ideas of history, culture and a collective identity. In the end, like it or not, we are all a product of the environment we live in.

Dor Guez is the founder of the ongoing project The Christian Palestinian Archive which according to the artist's post on ArtSpace relies on photographs and documents to "research and document the diasporic community of Christian Palestinians living throughout the Middle East." On another front, June 2012 saw the laying of the cornerstone for the "Palestinian Museum" in Birzeit, a museum which according to its website is 'dedicated to the exploration and understanding of the culture, history and society of Palestine and the Palestinian people'. It will be interesting to see whether projects undertaken by artists such as Guez will be considered and whether future collective work collaborations will be possible once the museum opens in 2014.

Share your opinion with me:
If you've been to the exhibition, what did you make of it? If you haven't been, you can still do so as the exhibition continues until the end of May.

However, for those of you NOT in London, you can click below to view the video "Watermelons Under the Bed' that has been posted on YouTube and maybe let me know what you think?

The sign at the entrance to the video installation 'Watermelons Under the Bed'

Book Review: 'Out of It' by Selma Dabbagh

In 1993, following the Oslo Accord signed by Israel and the Palestinians, it was agreed that Israel Defence Forces (IDF) would withdraw from parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank captured in the 1967 war with the Arabs, and Gaza would be included in the territories of the Palestinian National Authority. In 2005, when Israel pulled out its final troops from the Gaza, it declared its occupation of that area as over. A fact disputed by the Palestinians because Israel still controls Gaza's land and water borders as well as its airspace.

Two military factions inside Gaza, Fatah and Hamas, fought to gain control inside of Gaza (sometimes with deadly gun fighting and assassinations). In 2007, the Islamist militant group Hamas won the elections and in response, Israel to this day continues not only to impose severe restrictions  from and into the city of Gaza but has carried out various military operations against Hamas claiming that it is protecting its borders and its inhabitants from  Hamas' militant rocket shelling. Many civilian lives have been lost and casualties sustained on both sides in the process.

It is during one such military Israeli bombing operation of Gaza (exact timeline not specified) that the novel 'Out of It' opens. Rashid, a twenty-something member of the Mujahed family is terrified out of his mind by the bombing that has struck a nearby hospital. Thanks to his cannabis plant 'Gloria' he eventually passes out stone cold under his bed. As he awakens with 'face and floor tiles sealed together by a membrane of spittle' and checks his emails he finds that he has managed to secure a one-year scholarship to London. As far as Rashid is concerned this opportunity along with the work at The Human Rights Documentation Centre he set up with his best friend Khalil to record the violations happening against Gazans mean one thing and one thing only: a one-way ticket out of Gaza.

Iman, Rashid's twin sister, has just returned from studying in Switzerland. They are obviously a family with better means compared to other Gazans; their father (who now lives in Dubai with his Lebanese girlfriend) used to work for the Palestinian Authority when it was in exile. Already back for a year and teaching at a local school she feels that she is alienated by those who had not left during the occupation. She is desperate to be taken seriously to show how much she wants to help the situation in Gaza. After the night's bombing claims one of her students and his cousin (who she had a crush on) she blindly comes to a decision that could spell a disastrous outcome to everyone.

Sabri is the family's older brother, who has lost his legs, his wife and his child in an attempted assassination. But, in spite of his losses Sabri, the weakest character physically in the novel, is by far the strongest. He seems to rise above his disability (confined to the family's top floor apartment with no lift) and to rise above his daily humiliations (his mother has to change his catheter daily) channeling all his energy to compiling information and documentation and writing a record of the Palestinians' struggle for freedom. Throughout, he holds on to the hope that peace and justice will one day be granted to the Palestinians.

The novel is split into five parts. The first and fifth take place in Gaza, the second and fourth in London and the third in Dubai. We follow Rashid's life in London with Lisa where things don't turn out quite exactly as he had planned. In London, Rashid and Iman come face-to-face with notions of the Palestinians as a 'desolate and abandoned people' (neither of which Rashid feels) and of Israel as 'the most democratic country in the world' (which Lisa utterly refutes). Eventually, Rashid ends up arrested in a case of mistaken identity and ultimately has to leave London to return back to Gaza when his father will not pay for his tuition any longer. 

For the brief period that Rashid is there, Iman also joins him after spending a brief and disastrous time with her father in Dubai. In London, she meets Charles whose skin "was foreign and on it his sweat had the smell of wet potato peel." Iman, unlike her brother, does not lose sight of wanting to eventually return to Gaza after her temporary exile. She soon returns in the last part of the book and when Rashid questions her why when she could have stayed longer, she simply answers, "but I don't exist there" as if it were 'incredibly obvious'.

In the novel it seems that everyone is trying to get out of something. The father who has decided that there really is no cause to fight and gets out of it to live a rich man's life in the Gulf. His girlfriend, a Palestinian from the Lebanon camps, trying to put as much distance between herself and the camps as possible. Rashid who just wants out of it: out of Gaza, out of the conflict and out of his Palestinian skin. Iman trying to 'get out' of the feeling of being an outsider in her own country and with her own people, the fighter Ziyyad Ayyoubi trying to get out of his parents' shadow to carve a destiny and legacy of his own. The mother (aka The Sparrow), Abu Omar, Lisa, and many others throughout the novel including carrot boy who is a terrifying personality born of the dire situation in Gaza.

In the final part of the book Rashid has reached the ultimate truth: Gloria is dead, and he is trapped in Gaza. It is in this final utterly sad (at the same time strangely hopeful) part of the book that  Rashid finds his own happiness and comes to terms with his life confident in the realization that he is finally free to choose his own way 'out of it'.

Selma Dabbagh has managed to touch upon a lot of current Arab and Palestinian themes in her novel ingenuously avoiding over-crowding. A feat that is testimony to a very skilled writer indeed. Dabbagh shows supreme confidence in handling her characters and in the weaving of the various elements allowing the story to unfold and ultimately flow beautifully and with ease. This is a sensitive, gripping, compelling, powerful and assured novel. A beautiful story of  love, tragedy and ultimately hope. I smell a sequel!

For more on British Palestinian author Selma Dabbagh, click HERE.