Another that resonates with Dalia is a photograph of Maen Hammad’s grandmother’s hands lying across a bed of walnuts, not only because it’s a beautiful image, but because of its multi-layered resonance; how it evokes “nostalgic feelings” of mothers and grandmothers with beloved ingredients across the SWANA region, but simultaneously the current reality of how near-impossible these very same ingredients are to find in the West Bank and Gaza due to Israeli-imposed starvation. “It is such a tender photo but it says so much about the socio-political realities of Palestinians,” Dalia says.
Having a human element to his work is vital for Maen. “Land may be the compass of the cause, but not in the sentimental register it’s usually assigned. It isn’t an icon, an olive grove, or a landscape emptied of people. It is Palestinians – people – alive, exhausted, entangled in the daily choreography of outliving erasure,” says Maen. “I see land as an interlocutor. I try to resist the traps of self-orientalising and the visual habits that render Palestine timeless, romantic, or static. Like any social fabric, it is messy, contradictory, and never a silo. Even if land assumes the role of everything, I’m interested in how Palestinians inhabit it today, beyond the images we’ve been taught to see or consume.”
The power and importance of photography in shedding light on lived reality is something Dalia has become even more acutely aware of over the past two years, an understanding that informs the exhibition. “Photography can act as a testament, an archive and as evidence – a witness, essentially, to not only injustice against the Palestinian people but also to Palestinian dignity and humanity,” says the curator. The photographs throughout are evidence and witness to the unbreakable bond between Palestinians and their land, and artists determination to render this bond visual. In the words of Dean Majd, another of the exhibition’s photographers: “I feel connected to the land on a cellular level. It’s the record keeper of my family’s history. It communicates to me generational stories and secrets. The feelings reverberated in my bones when I was back home with my family, and I alchemised those feelings through the lens when I was making these images.”
Ard: To Belong to Land will open at Gallerita Gola in Milan from 14-30 December.