Where names become numbers, homes turn to rubble, and hopes are stolen away by the echo of F35 fighter jets. The founder of Palestine Museum US sat down with The Prisma to tell harrowing stories unfolding in Gaza, and to illuminate the art that documents them.
Zac Liew
He was a case of code blue. That means under normal circumstances the young boy could’ve lived. But the bombardment of Gaza pushed him down the list of priorities; people more likely to be saved were seen to first.
By the time doctor Khalid Khalidi could treat him, it was too late. The boy with no name, classified by the number 991, was left in a morgue for three days. No family came forward to claim him.
This deeply troubled Khalidi. The young doctor-artist withdrew some of the boy’s blood and added heparin to stop clotting. He then used the blood to colour in a drawing he’d made of an angel.
“These are the kind of stories that are coming out of Gaza right now,” says Faisal Saleh, the curator of “Art of Palestine | from the river to the sea” and founder of Palestine Museum US.
“There’s not just one or two, in fact there’s thousands of them but just not enough places to document them. That doctor had the chance to leave Gaza after October 7th, but refused. He still thinks about that boy every day,” he explains.
Saleh’s parents were forced to flee their native village of Salama during the Nakbah of 1948, when about 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their ancestral land by the rulers of the new state of Israel. They sought refuge in the West Bank, which is where the young Faisal grew up.
“Conditions were hard,” he says. “My family lost everything and had to start from scratch. I was also the last of eleven children.”
After moving to the United States in 1969 Saleh went to university and found success as an entrepreneur. He opened Palestine Museum US in 2018 and is putting on a new exhibition in London.
Saleh says he collects Palestinian art to send a simple but defiant message: “We are here”.
“The first theme of our London exhibition is an effort to prove our existence, to prove that we are human beings. We do so by trying to answer the question: Who are you?” he says.
“You may think it’s an obvious thing but it’s not to a lot of people. It’s difficult to get the mainstream media to engage with the Palestinian issue so people end up with the Israeli narrative as a default. It’s therefore especially important that we have a strong showing in the arts area, to humanise Palestinians to a global audience.”
Almost 30 Palestinian artists have had their work put up in P21 gallery. There is a range of visual art forms such as acrylic and oil paintings, watercolour paintings, sculptures, and maps of Palestine that show how many villages have been lost by force to Israeli soldiers and settlers. But according to Saleh, the art form is not what really matters.
“It’s about the content and the subject: what’s being conveyed. Any form of art is fine. It’s the message and the individuals being represented that really deserve our attention; whatever the artist felt and the emotions that they are trying to convey, and how they formulate that with the art that they’re skilled at making.”
The second theme of the exhibition is Gaza. Saleh points out that what’s happening there now is a ‘wake up call’ to the world that Palestinians have been under attack since the Nakbah in 1948 and under occupation since the end of the Six-Day War in 1967.
“We have a very large map of Palestine on the floor of the exhibit hall. People can walk on it and it shows Palestine as it looked in 1948 before Israel took over and changed all the names and destroyed the villages. Seeing the proper Palestinian names is quite powerful,” Saleh says. He adds that some of the art brings optimism for the future, despite the dashed dreams and the crushed homes.
“Some pieces have cheerful bright colours and depictbeautiful Palestinian landscapes. There is a painting of two Gaza girls that are wearing scarves on their heads, smiling and being cheerful at a time when they have no apparent reason to be. There’s one with a bunch of kids playing behind the tents, whose families have evacuated. You can see their blankets and bed covers suspended on clothes lines.”
He admits, however, that much of the art is ‘very grim and dark’. One by artist Amal Sobeh shows four children who are being hung by their hopes and dreams, represented by white balloons tied to their necks. The red balloons are set against a dark background so that hopes and aspirations are seen to be juxtaposed with the bleak and black setting that they emerge from.
Other artworks at the exhibition include a Palestinian history tapestry, 100 pieces of embroidery which each bring to life a certain moment in time. There are drawings by children who were invited to sketch what they saw around them as a form of therapy.
There are also recent photographs from Gaza that reflect the pain and the agony of the people living there, but Saleh says that these are not gory or graphic.
“We want to depict a more human suffering, human stresses that are relatable. We want to show the degree to which Gazans are being challenged in their everyday lives, from trying to make a living to keeping their houses and gardens in order. Some pictures were taken by an American artist with an old camera.”
With such a wide selection of art, this curator hopes to tease out the dreams and aspirations of Palestinian people, as well as their suffering, from the time of the Nakbah in 1948 to the present day. The exhibition does well to show a full Palestinian picture, because according to Saleh, “there isn’t any Palestinian art exhibition that can ignore the past or the present.”
Part of Saleh’s goal is to show the world the artistic brilliance of Palestinians, who are often only portrayed as terrorists or helpless victims.
He also shares his disappointment that the Western media has largely ignored his efforts to do so: “I’m very surprised by the lack of interest I’m getting from the mainstream media. It’s so difficult to get them to pay any attention.”
(Photos courtesy of the Palestine Museum US)
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