Return of the soul -The Nakbah project 2004 May the Journey begins in Lublin, East Poland 2007 January Al Hoash Gallery, The Palestinian Art Court are.

Return of the soul -The Nakbah project

2004 May the Journey begins in Lublin, East Poland

2007 January Al Hoash Gallery, The Palestinian Art Court are interested in the project. They invite me to be an artist in residence

2007 September I arrive in Palestine for the first time for three weeks

2007 October the start of the making up to 3,000 figures

February 2008 I go to Lebanon to begin second duplicate exhibition with 3,000 figures

2008 May 15th Exhibition opening to mark the 60th commemoration of Al Nakbah (The Catastrophe)

The artist’s journey• Why Palestine?

• I had been working with a number of Polish theatre companies

• On three occasions I visited Majdenek, a Polish concentration camp

• The last visit was in May 2004, that is when the journey began

Majdenek- a concentration camp in Lublin, East Poland

• Between 1942 to 1944 extermination took place

on mass

• Estimated killed 200,000

• In mates 40% Jews 35% Poles and others, Belarussians, Ukrainians, Russians, Germans, Austrians, etc

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• The red army liberated the camp before the Nazis had time to clear away the evidence of their atrocities. Consequently the camp was left intact with mounds of hair shaved from the heads, clothes, spectacles, children’s toys thousands of pairs of shoes and even mountains of ashes take from the incinerated bodies

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The camp

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My artistic journey began with shoes, I had previously designed a promenade performance in a disused shoe factory on the suburbs of Athens using hundreds of pairs of shoes. Majdenek had hundreds of thousands of pairs of shoes on display

On my last visit I bumped into a group of Israeli pilgrims. I felt a terrific empathy for them trying to imagine what it might be like if I had someone close to me who had been

murdered in this way. When I exited from the camp however I saw that the group had placed miniature Israeli flags on a grassy bank. The sight of these flags filled me with

alarm. In my mind this was a blood drenched flag associated with war crimes and atrocity. I decided to undertake a period of intensive research beginning with the Israeli flag created in 1948. I soon realized that this flag came to represent a process of ethnic

cleansing that aimed to rid Palestine of its indigenous population.

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• This initial experience at Majdenek which led to the questions that surrounded the creation of the Israeli flag motivated me into doing an art project that would require a great deal of research.

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An Nakbah 1948 Over 750,000 Palestinians had to flee their homeland escaping from a systematic terrorization process

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• I quickly realized how little I knew about the Palestinian history and the terrible injustice that had been imposed upon them.

• From the pages of history books and photographs I moved into the camps that still

exist after 60 years.

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Bedawi and Nahr Al Bared

• I photographed refugees from N a B living in UNRWA schools in Bedawi. N a B was virtually demolished by the Lebanese army in 2007.

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• 1948 2008

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It was on my last leg of the project’s journey in Lebanon that I realized I had come full circle. From the first Nakbah 1948 to the last 2007 at Nahr Al Bared

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Inspiration – Um Ali’s dream Unexpectedly the inspiration for

the art work came while I was watching a film at The Palestine Film Festival in London.

In the film a women has a dream. She sees Palestinians being hung like clothes on a laundry line.

She asks:

Why are they doing that to the poor people ?

Because they are Palestinians, that way they are kept in a state of suspension, they are neither able to touch heaven or earth”

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• While experimenting in wax, I dipped a papier mache figure into the boiling substance, the figure started to take on its own shape and form. In the whimsical way of an artist’s imagination the figure spoke to me,

• “I am the one” she said “I am your project!”

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• The figures increased in number but all the time I could not forget Um Ali’s dream, the figures representing people kept in a perpetual state of suspension.

• I began brainstorming suspension which lead to tank art

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• Following “tank art” I still wanted to create a work that was sculptural and began by placing the figures up in a model box

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• Workshops

• I decided that the figures should be given a life and soul by being made by

Palestinians across the region, both in and out of camps.

• In order to teach the making of the figures, I created related educational workshops covering anatomy for artists, proportion, body language and emotion, movement and Palestinian costume 1930’s to 1940’s.

• Working with regional partners Al Hoash gallery, Jerusalem, Al Balad Theatre,Jordan, Shams Theatre and Al Jana, Lebanon, it was organized for me to stay in refugee camps giving a six day workshop.

• Living in the camps with families was an essential part of my journey not only to gather first hand testimonials but also to try and gain an understanding of the depravation and difficulties suffered by Palestinian refugees.

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The workshop program began in Ramallah, young professional artists were chosen to lead further workshops in collaboration with The Red Crescent , in

Kalandia and Al Amari camps

Kalandia and Bethlehem

Jerusalem

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• Zarqa camp Jordan

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• Lebanon Bus camp

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Bedawi camp

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Borg Barajne

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Having established that I wanted to create thousands of small wax figures that represented the exodus out of Palestine, each figure has to have an identity of a person or first witness who left . A substantial part of the project has been gathering identities from across the region

• Questionnaires were distributed as widely as possible

• Seeking answers from across the pre 1948 map

• Questions relate to the time of exodus

• Rolls of paper are suspended between 3metre x 30 cm strips of plexy glass

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Gathering Identities through video interviews

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• In order to take the Nakbah project into a public space I began working with Ramallah artists painting the stenciled outline of the Nakbah figures on the apartheid wall

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I have been working in Edinburgh for a number of years as a theatre publicist and producer. Most notably with Teatr Biuro Podrozy

‘A fierce and flaming sensual event: shocking, beautiful, unmissable. 'Unforgettable… terrifying, electrifying, eloquent' Guardian

Carmen Funebre,

performed by Teatr Biuro Podrozy

The highly successful production based on the witness statements of Bosnian refugees, won massive media coverage, top Festival awards and went on to more than 45 countries around the world

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Taking the Palestinian Catastrophe to the world 60 years on

Art has a unique ability to inform, to raise questions by engaging the spectator’s emotions first then through a cerebral process of the mind

Still few in the world realize the sustained injustice whichPalestinians have suffered for over sixty years.

The aim of this art work is to act as monument that has been touched by thousands of personal lives

Edinburgh with its massive international media focus offers a platform with the possibility to give the story of the 1948 Nakbah exposure

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• 3000 Palestinians arrive in Jerusalem

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• The opening- al Hoash Gallery, East Jerusalem - May 15th 2008 In commemoration of 60 years of Nakbah

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• Figures made by Palestinians

• Each figure has an identity

• Identities are gathered from across the region and the diaspora around the world in order to ensure that the pre-1948 map is represented

• A sound sculpture accompanies the hanging testimonies, recordings were taken from different individuals

• Identity installation through questionnaire = strips of paper sheets 3metres x 30 cm in perplex glass hung are from the ceiling

• As the installation travels the world it is contributed to and increases in size

• Having travelled the world the figures finally return to Jerusalem - Palestine

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Exhibitions

Al Hoash Jerusalem, AL Mahatta Gallery

West bank, Palestine Edinburgh Arts Festival,

Scotland Darat Al Fanun Jordan,

Shams Theatre, Beirut, Lebanon