And We Have Countries

 

“And We Have Countries”
44 artists interpret the poem by Mahmoud Darwish

 

 

 

©Najib Joe Hakim,  The Last Sky   digital photograph on canvas


Over 40 artists
from the United States, Europe, Canada and Palestine interpret this poem by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish
in all media, with the challenge of producing a piece 6 inches x 8
inches in size. Artwork includes painting, ceramics, mosaics,
photography, drawing, metalwork, glass, sculpture, graphics and film. 

 
The
interpretations range from abstract constructions of wood and paint to
hand-forged copper to portraits to digital imagery.  Artists have
depicted specific lines from the poem, or used the words as inspiration
for their own exegesis.
 

 

“And we have countries without borders, like our idea
of the unknown, narrow and wide – countries whose maps
narrow to a gray tunnel as we walk in them and cry out
in their labyrinths: ‘And still we love you.’ 

Our love is an inherited disease. Countries that grow
by tossing us into the unknown. Their willows
and portrayals grow, their grasses and blue mountains.
A lake widens north of the soul. Wheat spikes
spring up south of the soul. The lemon shines like a lamp
in an emigrant’s night. Geography emits sacred texts.
And the ascending chain of hills reaches higher
and higher. The exile tells himself: ‘If I were a bird
I would burn my wings.’ The smells of autumn
become the image of one I love, soft rain seeps
into the dry heart and imagination opens to its source
and becomes reality’s terrain, the only true place.
Everything distant becomes rural and primitive,
as if the earth were still gathering itself to meet Adam
descending from his paradise. I say: These are the countries
that bear us…so when were we born?
Did Adam take two wives? Or will we be born again
to forget sin?”
Mahmoud Darwish
 

The artists include:
 
Lukman Ahmad
Shakir Alousi
Najwa Al Amin
Micaela Amateau  Amato
Ayed Arafah  
Ben Belgachi
Doris Bittar
Adam Chamy
Adnan Charara
Rajie Cook
Andrew Courtney
Tory Cowles
Sonia D’Agnese   
Manal Deeb
Mona El Bayoumi  
Najat El Khairy
Phoebe Farris
Elena Farsakh
Annemarie Feld
Louise Gish
Najib Joe Hakim
John Halaka
Sarra Hennigan
Andrew Ellis Johnson
Tamara Kamel
Lori Katz
Michael Keating
Nida Khalil
Zahi Khamis
Karam Mishalani  
Amr Mounib
Basima Mustafa
Ellen O’Grady
Dagmar Painter
Marcel Richter
Susanne Slavick
Vivien Sansour
Vian Shamounki  Borchert
Nasir Thamir
Mary Tuma
Corinne Whitlatch
Samia Zoghlami
Helen Zughaib

 

 

 

 

 


 

Featured in The Washington Post!

And We Have Countries

by Mark Jenkins

The title of the exhibition, “And We Have Countries,” at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery Al-Quds, is taken from a poem by the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. “Imagination opens to its source and becomes reality’s terrain, the only true place,” he wrote. Not all of the 44 participating artists, however, turned inward. Among the several works that depict walls and borders are Phoebe Farris’s crisp photographs of sky behind chain-link fences and John Halaka’s eloquent image of a face superimposed on a landscape, a piece that’s mounted on a nest of barbed wire. Nida Khalil’s mosaic landscape is dwarfed by its weathered, green-painted frame, which also suggests barriers.

As might be expected in a show keyed to a poem, some of the artworks, all 6 inches by 8 inches, include text that’s mostly, but not only, in Arabic. Sarra Hennigan presents Darwish’s words in Hebrew, stained with coffee and olive oil. Yet not all of the artists make direct references to the poet or his land. Andrew Courtney’s piece, a ceramic child’s face inside a box, evokes the idea of home by being made entirely of materials he found on his property in Upstate New York.

The show offers affordable pieces ($300 or less), and some of the pieces have been sold as gifts and are now represented only by a photo. That’s not altogether satisfying but is understandable.

And We Have Countries On view through Jan. 6 at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery Al-Quds, 2425 Virginia Ave. NW. 202-338-1958.