World demands - Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Spring 2012 ARTS & REVIEWSpalestine NEWS 29The other side of paradiseBetty Hunter talked tointernationally acclaimedPalestinian artist Laila Shawaabout her recent exhibition inLondon’s October Gallery.When Laila Shawa saw the Channel4 video of a captured youngwoman would-be suicide bomber,she immediately thought: “Whogave her the bomb? Why was she chosen?”That was in 2007 and since then the seedsof this exhibition have been germinating.Laila is angry. And her exhibition “TheOther Side of Paradise” is a roar of angerat the fate of women in her homeland. Thequestion of why the woman herself mightchoose to die in this way is not so difficult tounderstand when every family has sufferedloss and grief and sometimes whole familieshave been killed by the Israeli occupation.But accompanying this is the knowledge thatshe has been used. Finally, as she is madeto strip in a military cage, it is the occupierswho are the controllers as she rages withimpotence when the bomb fails to detonate.This incident has inspired work(“Trapped” series) which demands attentionwith bold, colourful images freeze-framingthe woman’s scream overwritten with Arabicscript and others recalling the celebrityrepeat images by Andy Warhol.In a range of works in different media,Laila shows women as prisoners of theirculture as well as of the Israeli occupation.Scream, image courtesy of the October Gallery.One of the effects of occupation is to drivewomen more into the home and, as moreyoung women wear the veil, she asks who iscontrolling their hidden bodies?Laila said: “I am concerned that thepressure from families for conformity, for thepreservation of ‘honour,’ is increasing andmay even be the motivation of some womenwho choose the desperate step of suicidebombing.”The “dressed” torso mannequins in her“Disposable Bodies” series challenge us toconsider the possible stories of young womendriven to extremes but affected individuallyby fashion and sensuality as well as socialmores, history and politics. The link betweencurrent western fashions and terrorism isfurther explored in the “Fashionista Terrorista”works featuring the ubiquitous keffiyeh.Gaza, now an open prison, is the“Paradise” of the title, once known for itsfertile cultivated plains. To many, Paradisesuggests hoped for immortality, often amotivation for martyrdom. Laila repeatedlyrefers to these motifs in the differentworks which often use photographs anddecorative eastern art to highlight the horrorof Cast Lead and other acts of aggressionagainst Gaza, where she was brought up,and its people.Summing up her pessimism aboutthe future of Palestine, Laila Shawa hasproduced an ironic statement aboutPalestine’s non existence with the work“Stamp for a Lost Country.” However thisamazing exhibition is a showcase of hervibrant and continuing work demandingthat the world wakes up to the situation ofPalestine.• See the works from the exhibition at:www.octobergallery.co.uk/artists/shawa/index.shtml.the swimmer from Jenin, which has no swimming pool, could notobtain a military permit to get to nearby Nazareth. Nader, the 28-year-old runner from Gaza had been training hard for 10 years butit took months for him to get a permit to travel to Jericho where thepre-Olympic training takes place. Even here, equipment consistssimply of old tyres put to a multitude of uses and it took weeks ofbureaucratic wrangling to get proper running shoes and some sortof uniform.But somehow they make it to Guangzhou for two months oftraining and acclimitisation before the games, adapting to a cityof 20 million people and food they find truly bizarre. None of themachieve a medal but the awed silence with which Nader’s familyin Gaza watch their son on TV, carrying the Palestinian flag at theopening ceremony, bears witness to a pride that goes way beyondsporting achievement.A clip of the film can be found on http://tinyurl.com/c6nk2kj.Bilel Yousef’s Back to One’s Roots looks at the dilemmafacing the Druze community in Israel by following theemotional struggle of Yaman, whose brothers and uncle losttheir lives serving in the IDF. Coopted by the Israeli state asa vulnerable and isolated community, the Druze have traditionallyfound employment in the army and police force, while remainingsuspect in the eyes of many Israelis. Used as “cannon fodder,” asone participant put it, their losses create antagonism towards theirPalestinian neighbours and tend to cement loyalty to the Israelistate. Yet the Druze have lost most of their land to Israel and feelthey inhabit a kind of social and political no-man’s-land.Yaman and his family mourn his brothers.Yaman became a warden in a jail holding Palestinian activists.He had been taught to view them as terrorists but he discoveredmany of them were highly educated and morally responsibleand learnt a lot about the Palestinian national struggle. Aftermuch heart-searching he changed the entire direction of hislife, studying law and then defending the prisoners he had beenguarding.• The Palestine Film Festival curates a huge library of films.See www.palestinefilm.org • Email:info@palestinefilm.org.