Bissan Rafe is a Palestinian- American visual art originally from Beisan who works and lives in Houston, Texas.

Bissan’s artwork ranges from political cartoons, oil paintings, illustrations and literature. Her art connects the concept of world culture and folklore with a Palestinian theme. Her work has been exhibited in various galleries and biennials throughout the world including: USA, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Japan, UK and Palestine.

She established Nohra-Studio in Houston back in 2007. She is also known for her writings and illustrative novelettes in the literary fiction anthology.

She is the director of international relations and a member of the directive council at the International Artist Collective, Ali Ribelli, based in Italy. Her work ranges from oil paintings to illustrations and many things in between. One of her most notable oil series is Palestina I, a series of oil-on-wood paintings that outline the Palestinian folklore and dilemma using folkloric dresses.

Bissan never formally studied art except in two college-level courses in high school and, instead, is a biological science major from the University of Houston System pursuing a future career in naturopathic medicine.

Bissan Rafe´s artwork

Sources:

http://www.nohra-studio.com/projects

www.palestinechronicle.com

http://archive.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=3715&ed=206

Further reading:

– Palestinian Folkloric Fairy Tales: Palestinian Painter, Bissan Rafe

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/old/view_article_details.php?id=19159

-Art of the Palestinian diáspora

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=382074

– Palestinian Folkloric Fairy Tales A Spotlight on Palestinian Painter Bissan Rafe

http://archive.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=3715&ed=206

Ahlam Shibli was born in Arab al Sbaih (Palestine) in 1970. Actually she lives in Haifa. She is a photographer and her work explores themes like the life of the Palestinian in villages unrecognized by the illegal state of Israel in the Negev and northern Galilee regions.

Her work deals with the loss of home and what it implies, but also with the restrictions and limitations that a home imposes on the inidividual.

Her work is associated to photojournalism and it involves an engagement with the subjects.

She is a very active person and since 1996 she has been working in the field of photography, realizing research projects that focused on the Palestinian living conditions under Israeli occupation.

First of all, there are the photographic series on the living conditions of the Palestinian people, within the borders of Israel, in the Palestinian occupied territories that are now partly self-administered territories, and in exile, be it in Jordan or elsewhere in the diaspora. Some of her earliest works address this situation, for example Voyage in Mt. Tabor (1998), Wadi Saleib in Nine Volumes (1999).

In the series Unrecognised (2000), which addresses Palestinian villages that are not recognised by the state of Israel and which therefore do not appear on the official Israeli maps. Shibli has returned over and over to these and similar locations.

In Goter (2002-03), the mostly black-and-white were taken in two types of areas where Bedouin families live: villages that they’ve inhabited for centuries but are unrecognized by the Israeli government, and “recognized” townships set up by the government. In the images we can see rocky terrains and flat landscapes sometimes with only one building. We can see children playing , families living in desolation.

In Trackers (2005), a series of photographs concerned with young Palestinian men who decide to enrol in the Israeli army. In the artist’s own words, the project investigates the price paid by a colonized minority to a majority of colonizers, so they can be accepted, change their identity, survive, or perhaps all of this and more.

In 2006 she participated in South Koreal with A Tale of Two Cities, in Brazil with How to Live Together, in Spain with The Unhomely: Phantom Scenes in Global Society and in Australia with Home Ground.

Arab al-Sbaih (2007) and The Valley (2007—08), which can together be read as a discontinuous but cohesive narrative, or in more personal works tracking down vestiges of the past.

Trauma (2008–09) have confronted the ambiguous nature of colonialism and occupation and the relentless search for the meanings of home. Starting with commemorations of the atrocious massacre at Tulle that took place on 9 July 1944, Shibli reflects on the paradox of a population that resisted the German occupation, only to embark a few years later on a colonial war in Indochina and Algeria.

“Death” (2011-12), commissioned by the three museums co-hosting her retrospective (MACBA, the Jeu de Paume, Paris, and the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto), is her most ambitious and difficult work to date. It provides an in-depth study of commemorative images of Palestinian martyrs in the city of Nablus, a bastion of Palestinian resistance during the Second Intifada (2000-05). A martyr in these circumstances is any Palestinian killed due to the Israeli occupation, including soldiers who died in confrontations with Israeli forces, civilians killed in Israeli attacks and suicide bombers who carried out attacks in Israel.

Ahlam Shibli, artist talk at DCA

Ahlam Shibli´s Art Work

The Valley ( Arab al-Shibli, 2007-2008. Series of 32 photographs )

Peace and Love ( 4 pictures)

Sources:

-Ahlamshibli .com

– ArtStack ( https://theartstack.com/artist/ahlam-shibli/about )

-Art Discover ( http://www.artdiscover.com/en/artists/ahlam-shibli-id1739 )

–Further Reading:

–Walls, No Bridges: The Relation Between Revealing and Disguising in Ahlam Shibli’s Photographic Practice http://www.afterall.org/journal/issue.32/walls-no-bridges-the-relation-between-revealing-and-disguising-in-ahlam-shibli-s-photograp )

–http://www.ahlamshibli.com/Work/Work.htm

– Ahlam Shibli-Phantom Home (http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/ahlam-shibli-phantom-home/ ) 

–What lies beneath (http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/oct/07/photography )

Abed Abdi is a Palestinian sculptor and muralist. He was born in 1942 in Haifa where he still lives. He belongs to the generation of post-1948 pioneering visual artists.

His father Abed el Rahman el Haj, was mayor of the city of Haifa in the years 1920-1927. In April 1948, the family´s artist were uprooted from their home, his father remained in Haifa. They went to live in different refugee camps until they were allowed to go back to Palestine as part of the family reunification program.

He start his love for art during high school where he learned painting and sculpting. In 1962 he was accepted for membership in the Haifa branch of the Israeli Association of Painters and Sculptors becoming the first Palestinian member.

He studied Fine Arts in Germany where he specialized in murals and environmental sculpture.

In 1970 after he received his diploma, he was selected along a group of other graduating students at the academy, to participate in the erection of a huge mural at the Cultural Palace built in 1968 in Dresden. The mural still remains a cultural landmark of this part of unified Germany.

In 1972 Abdi returned from Germany and started working as an illustrator, graphic designer, sculptor, curator and teacher of fine art in colleges and community centers.

After studying in Dresden, Abdi became the first Palestinian to build monumental art on native soil. His allegorical monuments in Galilee, honouring human fortitude and resistance, include a narrative mural. He built a bronze monument dedicated to six Palestinians who were shot on Land Day (1).

In the years 1972 to 1982 he was the graphic designer and graphic editor of the newspaper Al Ittihad and of the literary journal Al Jadid published in Haifa. During this period working there, he created caricatures and illustratios.

In the 1990s he started to change things in his art and he began turning to mixed media and color painting, using materials like glass, copper, wood and aluminium.

The city of Haifa awarded Abed Abdi the “Herman Struck Best Artist of the Year” in 1973 and that year he obtained the Young Artist´s award at the Berlin International Youth Festival.

Abed Abdi has exhibited in Qatar, Israel, Belgium and Bulgaria. He has participated in over 45 group exhibitions, among them the joint Palestinian-Israeli exhibition “It’s possible” which toured the US and Germany between 1988 and 1990.

In 1995 he participated in the second exhibition for Palestinians and Israelis in Germany. His work appeared in the “Solidarity with the Palestinian People” exhibit in Tokyo, Berlin, Brussels, Belgrade and Athens.

He also organized and participated in exhibitions around Palestine in the period between 1980 and 1987 defending the freedom of expression and creativity.

In 1999 for the second time he received the Hermann Struck Best Artist of the Year Prize.

During the years 2001, 2002 he received a number of awards from local Rotary clubs in Haifa and Nazareth.

In 2008 he became the first Palestinian artist living in the illegal state of Israel to win the Israeli Minister of Science, Culture and Sport Award for art and graphic art. In the same year he received a honorary mention from Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures.

In 2010 he received the title of notable citizen of Haifa.

Part of an interview with Abed Abdi, Palestinian painter from Haifa, Feb 2014

Reference

(1) On 30 March 1976, thousands of people belonging to the Palestinian minority in Israel gathered to protest Israeli government plans to expropriate 60,000 dunams of Arab-owned land in the Galilee. In the resulting confrontations with Israeli police, six Palestinians were killed, hundreds wounded, and hundreds jailed. In the intervening years, those events have become consecrated in the Palestinian memory as Land Day.

Abed Abdi ´s work

Memorial at Shafar’

                                                     Memorial for the six martyrs of the Day of the Land (1978)

…in Wadi Nisnas for the Feast of the Feasts, in 1998

Majnoune

Sources:

–Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation

-Institute for Middle East Understand (http://imeu.org/article/who-are-some-well-known-palestinian-painters-or-other-visual-artists)

-ElectronicIntifada.com

-Jadadiyya.com

-Abedabdi.com

Further Reading:

–Part of an interview with Abed Abdi, Palestinian painter from …

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzmQNokv-Yo )

– What is it that Palestinians commemorate on Land Day?(http://electronicintifada.net/content/what-it-palestinians-commemorate-land-day/5039 )

– Abed Abdi and the Liberation Art of Palestine

(http://abedabdi.com/index.php/en/reviews/203-abed-abdi-and-the-liberation-art-of-palestine )

Abdul Hay Mosallam born in Dawaymeh, Hebron, Palestine in 1933, and currently lives and works in Amman, Jordan. He is a self-taugh artist who has meticulously worked on achiving the recent histories of the Palestinian people. He didn´t go for training or any institution to learn art. He uses very simple tools and materials to creat painted reliefs. A mixture of glue and sawdust makes up the reliefs.

The artist recreates scenes from daily life in his lost Palestinian home since his expulsión from his hometown in 1948. He is a very active person who keeps working and producing. He produced extensive documentation of the recent Palestinian struggle and liberation movements of a form of painted reliefs. His work shows the real history of the Palestinian people. He recalls from his days in the villages scenes of traditions and celebrations, but also from the years while he was in exile.

He worked at the maintenance department of the Jordanian Air Force before he joined the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). In 1960 he was sent with his family to Lybya and there he learnt his technique and turn to art.

His work talks about the Diaspora , the struggle of many Palestinians and his artistic militance.

He participated in more than 35 Arab and international exhibitions and in 33 Japanese artists exhibition in Tokyo on the Sabra – Shatilla massacre that took place in Lebanon in 1982.

His work is very well know in Arab countries but also in Europe where he has held solo exhibitions.

Abdul Hay Mossalam´s work has been recognized by important critics and journalists who wrote about his work in differenr magazines.

In addition to his ongoing work, Abdul-Hay dreams of establishing a museum – not only for his own works and not only to collect works from the past, but as a place where one could house the present aspirations of his people.

 Abdul Hay Mosallam’s Workshop – Jabal Qusur   

 Abdul Hay Mosallam´s work

Sources:

-Zara Gallery (http://www.zaragallery.org/content/ArtistDetails.aspx?a_id=94 )

-Facebook / Abdul Hay Mossalam

Further Reading:

– Sharjah Art Foundation brings together three distinctive new exhibitions

(http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/art/sharjah-art-foundation-brings-together-three-distinctive-new-exhibitions )