Cartography of resistance.

PALESTINIAN ART 

BY GANNIT ANKORI

LONDON: REAKTION Books, 2006

256 pp./$35.00 (SB)

Gannit Ankori's book Palestinian Art, a prime model of art historical research, deviates from the narrow confines of the discipline and must be read as a cultural document, in the broadest sense of the term, and as an expression of an ethical position espoused by a scholar in times of continued occupation. Ankori's book unites the distinct gestures enacted by a long line of Palestinian artists who employ visual images in general, particularly photography, as an instrument to create a "minor language" in the sense that was coined by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. It is not the language of a minority, but rather a minor mode of employing the language of the majority, unraveling its boundaries, brushing it against the grain, and relentlessly establishing its foreignness. It is this reconstruction of history that may be viewed as a form of activism.

From start to finish Ankori's book demonstrates how the forced expulsion of the Palestinians from their homes and the violent dismemberment of their homeland fashioned Palestinian art so that artworks that are very different from one another still coalesce and share a common denominator: "... many of the artworks--their diverse stylistic and thematic mien not-withstanding--expressed profound experiences of displacement, cultural hybridity and fragmentation, as well as a strong desire for healing and belonging" (8).

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The book deals with some twenty-five artists. The first chapter focuses on art created before the Nakba. (1) The second explores work created in "the shadow of the Nakba." Each of the next four chapters is devoted to a contemporary artist: Sliman Mansour, Kamal Boullata, Mona Hatoum, and Khalil Rabah. The final section discusses the work of artists who live and work within the state of Israel.

The analysis of the diverse artworks is rich and fascinating because it interweaves the visual with the theoretical and the biographical. "Dis-Orientalism"--a neologism that Ankori coined in reference to Edward Said--provides an interpretive lens through which she views the visual material. Ankori emphasizes the literal and passive meaning of the term: the loss of the orient, but also its active and activist defintion: the dismantling of a western perspective of the Orient. The unique way in which Ankori merges the biographies of the artists and activates them in her reading of their work, enables her to transform Said's term "Orientalism" into a dynamic rewriting of space as the fluid movement between places that challenges their stability and distinetiveness.

Ankori's study may be regarded as an eye-opening shift of the angle of vision; it turns the spotlight, and illuminates another region that has thus far been left in the dark. To call this region "Palestinian Art" (as the title of her book suggests) does not merely understate its significance, but it also, perhaps, misses the essence of her project. The book actually explores and exposes the broad domain of Palestinian material culture in general and its visual components in particular. The first two chapters of the book invite the readers to speculate about the fate of all the cultural objects that were housed in Palestinian homes (that were either destroyed or depopulated and re-inhabited by Jews). Based on data presented in the book, the readers are also urged to fathom the breadth and depth of the cultural scene that embraced the paintings, pianos, books, and objets d'art that once were, but are no more.

"Art," Ankori writes, "is a unique and complex creative process undertaken by individuals within specifie contexts ..." (217). The definition, which appears at the end of the book as a succinct summary of the premises and principals that guided the book and its author, is interesting in two respects. The first relates to the very need to define art and the concept of art that underpins the writing of the book; the second point of interest relates to the nature of the definition itself. The compound term that links the word "art" with the name of a national entity--e.g., American Art, Israeli Art, French Art--is problematic (was Pablo Picasso a Spanish or a French artist? Is Michal Rovner an Israeli or an American artist?), and in most eases, it is suspieiously linked to a purist or nationalistic stance. Such a purist position is usually espoused by the nation-state or by elements supported by the state, and its goal is to "distill" from a multitude of material that which deserves to be titled: the art of the nation.

However, within a post-Nakba Palestinian context, not only is the compound term "Palestinian Art" not suspect, but the construction and promulgation of the term, through the collection, reconstruction, analysis, presentation, and publication of artworks, becomes a civic duty and an intellectual imperative all in one. The fact that these works have been eradicated, looted, forgotten, repressed, and rendered irretrievable transforms the act of gathering and interpreting them into a cardinal duty. What is required of the artists whose work is documented in the book--and of Ankori herself--is to boldly confront the gaping void that was created in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the concerted efforts implemented by the Israeli occupation to perpetuate this vacuum between national purism and art created under threatened conditions. This makes each and every one of them a pioneer who breaks new ground. Ankori's book itself is the first English-language book devoted to Palestinian art that offers a comprehensive overview of the subject from its inception, whenever that point may be, until today. Her book, which positions the term "Palestinian Art" at the forefront as part of the effort to reconstruct what had been obliterated in 1948, unravels the boundaries suggested by this term by offering a fluid definition of the creative process of making art. Art is defined by Ankori as "a unique and complex creative process," but one that is "undertaken by individuals" (not necessarily "artists"). It is also an activity that does not owe its existence or depend upon a public sphere or structure for display, study, or publication. Art exists because individuals choose to devote themselves to this creative endeavor.

Ali Zaarur's photograph, Untitled (1948), testifies to the production of art (it documents a medium-sized oil on canvas painting) as well as to its consumption, in the manner in which the painting was integrated into a domestic urban bourgeois space, enclosed within a prominent frame, hanging symmetrically between two dark window frames:

  Ali Zaarur's photograph of a bombed interior from 1948 speaks volumes
  about art, faith and loss. Zaarur (1901-1972) is considered to have
  been the first professional Muslim photographer active in Palestine
  before 1948 ... Today, more than half a century after this image was
  framed and frozen by the photographer's art, we may contemplate the
  miracles that did not take place. In the long run, this icon of the
  Madonna was not saved. Like numerous other paintings ... and other
  "portable assets" that belonged to Palestinians before the first half
  of the Nakba, this painting has been lost (24-25).

The photograph allows Ankori to illustrate that painting flourished in pre-Nakba Palestine, but this fact is even more dramatically emphasized by the paintings of Zulfa al-Sa'di and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra that are reproduced in the book. Beyond this, the photograph evokes a question that Ankori articulates (for the first time in Israel): where are all the artworks today? The possible responses to this query make one shudder. Were they destroyed like infected objects in need of "cleansing?" Do they continue to adorn the walls of the homes that Jews appropriated from Palestinians? Were they sold or traded off? Did they roam from place to place with their owners, who passed them along with the secrets they possess, from generation to generation? Or are they silently located in oblivious spaces, untraceable? The picture that Ankori reconstructs regarding the character and scope of pre-Nakba Palestinian art is in keeping with her revisionist definition of art, which includes, alongside paintings and sculptures, architecture, embroidery, painted pottery, photography, and more. An inclusive approach allows her to offer--on a historiography-cal level--a revised evaluation of the creative works produced by women who were marginalized due to gender biases and considered inferior and outside the purview of the "fine arts."

The primary sources that enable Ankori to sketch a gloomy and violent picture of the looting that followed the expulsion of the Palestinians include testimonies of Israelis who took part in the 1948 war and the expulsion; diary entries by Jews and non-Jews; Ben-Gurion's memoirs; and archival documents from the office of the Custodian of Abandoned Property. In reporting one of the testimonies, she writes: "In 1948 an eyewitness saw a truck-load of Palestinian property being driven away from the affluent houses of Baka'a. Carpets, pianos, objets d'art and pieces of beautifully upholstered furniture caught his eye" (46). As one reads the concluding passage of this testimony, it is revealed that the eyewitness is, in fact, Ankori's father. She provided him with the opportunity to expose the crimes that he had witnessed and to break--albeit partially--the conspiracy of silence. The eyewitness, as Ankori continues to tell the story, stopped the looters, who belonged to an elite unit of the Palmah, and asked where they were taking the spoils of war. "They were cultured, too," Ankori writes in a tone that merges irony, grief, and anger. "Therefore the piano would serve them well in their Kibbutz [Israeli collective community], they explained" (46). After reading these sentences in Ankori's book, perhaps a few of the hundreds of children who learned how to play the piano with this looted instrument or one of its many twins, even as they fashioned themselves as cultured human beings, experienced shivers down their spines.

In conclusion, Ankori's definition of art blurs the divisions that usually separate distinct artistic realms (high and low art, arts and crafts, and categories related to genres or media) and also suggests an analysis that views them all as visual articulations of a "complex creative process." Her book also defies the borders delineated by Israel's cartographers during the last decades. In their stead, it embraces art and artifacts created here, there, and overseas--beyond any territorial boundaries--stressing, instead, the affinity of art and artists to multifarious aspects of Palestine and Palestinian identity. Hence, the book provides artists from all over the globe with the opportunity to formulate their position in reference to Palestinian art and to begin to enjoy the privilege of positioning themselves within this category or outside it or even questioning its existence and validity. Because the occupied territories are fragmented and punctured like a sieve, and given the fact that the artists are unable to interact fluidly and the public sphere in which they operate is often severed from the physical locus inspiring their art (Palestine), books and catalogs may serve as alternative spaces. These alternative spaces refuse to submit to the military presence and the roadblocks that splice and cut off Palestinians' living space. Although it is focused on issues related to national identity, Palestinian Art offers a way to overcome the traditional and narrow definition of national identity as dependent on a national unified space, and delineates an alternative de-territorialized cartography of resistance.

ARIELLA AZOULAY is an author, curator, and director living in Tel Aviv, Israel.

NOTE

1. The Nakba (literally: catastrophe) is the term used to refer to the events of 1948 that led to the establishment of the state of Israel as well as to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their home and the destruction and depopulation of over 400 Palestinian villages and urban centers.

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