Reviewed by Tania Abu Kishk
When one reads the ambitious book title “Palestinian Art”, one logically might expect to read a book on Palestinian art. However what one finds in Gannit Ankori’s book is a focus on only four artists, as well as a brief overview of the development of Palestinian art. Unfortunately, “Palestinian Art” is neither a comprehensive book about Palestinian art nor Palestinian artists.
Despite the misleading title, the book can serve as a useful contribution to studies of Palestinian art for those who do not read Arabic. Also interesting are the details in the focus on the lives of the few artists who are part of the book. The four artists Ankori chose to focus on are the following: Sliman Mansour, Kamal Boullata, Mona Hatoum, and Khalil Rabah.
Unfortunately the book gives a limited taste of contemporary
Palestinian art. In the introduction, we are told, “Palestinian art remains
either totally overlooked or relegated to the margins of the art globe”. The
footnote tells us the exception is Mona Hatoum. Strangely it is the book itself
that seems to have overlooked Palestinians on the art scene, most glaring in the
absence of Emily Jacir who has exhibited regularly in high profile exhibitions
including the Istanbul and Venice Biennales. Also overlooked are artists such
as Sharif Waked, Vera Tamari, Rula Halawani, Tareq al Ghossein, Ahlam Shibley,
Ashraf Fawarkhry, and Sandy Hilal.
Serious researchers of Palestinian art will be aware of the accusations of plagiarism in Ankori’s book by both the League of Palestinian Artists as well as by the esteemed Palestinian artist and researcher himself, Kamal Boullata (who is also featured in the book). Far from being the “first book on Palestinian art”, which may be a sales gimmick, but nonetheless completely ignores the many articles and books, and most especially the writings and research of Kamal Boullata on the subject.
“Palestinian Art” is replete with the borrowing of entire theses and ideas from Kamal Boulatta’s extensive work with the rare and brief nod of acknowledgment to him, leaving a well-informed reader with many questions. Those familiar with the writings on Palestinian art throughout the decades will unfortunately find Ankori’s book as nothing more than a reiteration of what has already been contributed to the field. The book might however be helpful to English readers in university classrooms.
Occasionally the book indicates Ankori’s self-awareness of the irony of an Israeli writing about Palestinian art, and at times there seems to be an effort to try to place herself also as an “other” in order to deal with this. In the preface, for example, she provides an earnest, if not slightly far-reaching, attempt to hide her privilege as a white researcher of Ashkenazi background and as an Israeli in the US by telling a girlhood story of when she was in Ohio and some children made her feel like a “dark and primitive Israeli.”
These anecdotes of course seem to be more about Ankori herself rather then the subject she writes on. One wonders whether she is trying to find a way to deal with her own background and privilege and perhaps feelings of guilt as later she relates the story of her father trying to stop Jewish looters in 1948 from driving away with Palestinian property including carpets, artwork, furniture and a piano. Nevertheless Ankori’s appreciation and respect for Palestinian art comes through.
However, what is most troubling about the book is its arrangement of the chapters. Ankori has chosen to break up the chapters as follows: Part I which deals with the foundations of Palestinian art, Part II which focuses on artists Suleiman Mansour and Kamal Boulatta, Part III which focuses on artists Muna Hatoum and Khalil Rabah, and Part IV which is called “Arabs in Israel” and focuses on five young Palestinians artists who live in Israel, thereby totally separating these artists from the rest of their colleagues in Palestine and the Diaspora.
No justification is given to the fact that the four main Palestinian artists highlighted are artists who live both in the West Bank as well as in the Diaspora, and the final chapter inexplicably separates the five Palestinians in Israel from the rest of the artists, as if they are not part of the same world as the others. Breaking up and separating of these Palestinian artists from the other artists perhaps reveals Ankori’s “Israeli gaze” and is the very thing most Palestinians have tried to resist – their separation from each other and subsequent compartmentalization. This is a particularly sensitive subject for Palestinians in Israel who have been already isolated from their Palestinian brothers and sisters.
To the average West Banker or Gazan, a Palestinian from Nazareth, Haifa or Tarshiha, is simply another Palestinian. For Palestinians in the Diaspora, it is the same. Ankori discusses the unfamiliarity of the Palestinian Diaspora with those who live within Palestine 1948 borders and who now carry Israeli ID cards. They are refereed to in the book as “sometimes called Arab-Israelis” – which may be true to Israelis but never to Palestinians. They share the same collective experience of dispossession, no matter where they are today.
Ankori also mentions that these Palestinians who live in Israel “do not compromise a homogenous group. They are villagers, city dwellers, Bedouins, Christians, Muslims, secular and come from divers social-economic and cultural backgrounds.” Of course they do. As all Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Diaspora do as well. Why Ankori doesn’t mention this in reference to the other Palestinians is not entirely clear.
To Palestinians, who tend to be quite critical of how their history is told by others, and rightly so, there are details which may jump out. For example in Chapter 6, in a discussion about Muna Hatoum’s work, there is a mention of the massacre in Dayr Yassin. Ankori states this massacre “may have contributed to the fear that drove most of the Arab population of Haifa to flee their homes in panic”. In fact there were numerous massacres much closer to Haifa that contributed to the flight of refugees from Haifa, such as in the villages of Tantura, Balah al Shaykh as well as Safsaf, Saliha, and Sasa further north, which had more of an impact on Hatoum’s family than the one in Dayr Yassin which was much further away.
In her discussion of Raeda Saadeh, a Palestinian artist from a village inside what is now Israel, Saadeh is compared to Shirin Neshat, Jananne al-Ani and “other Muslim women who work in the West but explore their Muslim roots from a specifically feminist perspective. “ Saadeh’s art “deals with Muslim society’s strict control of women through obsessive restriction of their bodies and their sexuality”. This stereotype indicates an underlying inability to see that Muslim and feminist are terms not in conflict with each other to many Muslim women. In general however, to Ankori’s credit, she tends to avoid this kin d of orientalism.
At times, “Palestinian Art” overemphasizes the religion of the individual artists, be it Christian or Muslim, in a way indicative of outsiders who research Palestinian society. However in general, the book does capture the heterogeneous nature of Palestinians and their history as a very mixed society.
One wishes that with Ankori’s access to the artists, her research might have
been able to explore their own anxieties and perhaps issues of self-censorship,
particularly among Palestinians living inside Israel in their work and
challenges faced living in a society that refuses to recognize their history.
Many of the artists study in Israeli universities and with Israeli professors
or in Europe and the United States. This discussion could have served to inform
the book and deepened its study of Palestinian artists lives, a subject not
often addressed.
“Palestinian Art” does provide interesting biographical information about the included artists with deep exploration of their lives land work, such as Kamal Boullata’s selling of a painting in an exhibit in Amman to an American diplomat’s wife who then drove to Palestine to find the artist, and to her surprise found a 15-year old boy in school. Ankori remains true to recognizing tatreez (Palestinian embroidery) as well as pottery and other traditions as art forms.
November 2006