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Carlos Valladares
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“We can stand shoulder to shoulder with the world’s greatest artists.”
So says Faisal Saleh, founder of the Palestine Museum US. Since 2018, he has directed the space. He also owns the building—an office complex in Woodbridge, Connecticut—and so is free from worry over upsetting the various bureaucracies who might hesitate to showcase Palestinian art.
A soft ban on Palestinian artists is, and has been, all too pervasive. (Saleh tells me: “The name ‘Palestine’ is radioactive right now.”) This year’s Venice Biennale, with its theme “Foreigners Everywhere,” panders to an idea of inclusivity. But when the Palestine Museum proposed the exhibition “Foreigners in their Homeland” as a collateral event, the proposal was rejected. Palestine also does not have a national pavilion, since Italy does not recognize it as a sovereign nation. Besides, according to Saleh, any art from Palestine is instantly tagged as Political with a capital-“P.” Thus, art and expressions are swept away to escape a boogeyman controversy. What gets left behind? Tough-minded work that deals with the struggle of love, anger, jealousy, fear, survival, loss, and, beyond this, a desire for what can come.
No matter: Saleh staged the exhibition anyway, renting Venice’s Palazzo Mora, where “Foreigners in their Homeland” is up until November 24, 2024. Most of the Venice artists have works on view in Connecticut, too, in the Palestine Museum’s permanent collection.
Loss—and the question of how to regain one’s bearings—is a common touchpoint in the works at the museum. Saleh wants to raise the profile of those Palestinian artists who know intimately the contours of loss, who long with passion for a space to give form to their dreams. When we face Khair Alah Salim’s painted solo cellist, who plays to her audience of three unpeeled oranges in an orange haze, we see how it is a clandestine joy—and a right too often taken as a privilege—to render a face, to paint fixed, concentrated eyes.
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| Raghda Zaiton: “Waiting,” 2020. Photo Carlos Valladares |
