For a Stranger

For A Stranger

May 8 to June 6

Abdelali Dahrouch: The Palestinian narrative has been and continues to be one of exile—a wandering legacy of dispossession, oppression, and injustice—interrupted, muffled and subverted by the Zionist propaganda machine. Palestinian life stops at Israeli checkpoints; meanders its way through rugged hills around illegal Israeli outposts, dodges bullets and tank shells, bleeds underneath the rubble of freshly demolished homes, and regresses to its original point of departure: squalid camps under the suffocating grip of curfew. These points of humiliation violate the stream of a people’s narrative and their traditions. The discontinuity of Palestinian life manifests itself not only in the physical/corporeal realm—of lands uprooted and settled—but also within the psychic and the spiritual, deep within the wounded recesses of memory. Edward W. Said writes:

Thus Palestinian life is scattered, discontinuous, marked by the artificial and imposed arrangements of interrupted or confined space, by the dislocations and unsynchronized rhythms of disturbed time…For where no straight line leads to home to birthplace to school to maturity, all events are accidents, all progress is a digression, all residence is exile. We linger in nondescript places, neither here nor there.

Stories are passed from one generation to another, stories of experience be they traumatic, joyful or mundane. They become the fabric of a people’s cultural tapestry—a discursive and creative field of belonging and displacement. Palestine—as nation, identity, and subjectivity—is supplanted when an idea, powerful in its symbolism and fixity, disrupts the natural rhythm of an existing and historically rooted narrative. Zionism represents a hegemonic paradigm; it is a dominant ideology that sanctions the violent deeds of oppression, wanton destruction of homes and land, and the collective punishment of a people under conquest and siege. Its propaganda leads us down a treacherous path of History in the making. The narrativization of this landscape, however, is incomplete. It relies on the confiscation and obliteration of imagined communities, and with them, all their nightmares and dreams of time, place and being. These memories are everlasting, concomitantly centuries old and new born. Lodged in the pockets of the soul, like stained, wrinkled handkerchiefs, young cotton fibers—repositories of tears, sweat and blood—become antique, with tales of forgotten souls contained.

For centuries, the collective agency of Palestinian will has endeavored to re- narrativize its voice and assert its tattered and dismembered skeleton into the pages of history, into the consciousness of an apathetic international community. These remains, solicit recognition and peace deep within the recesses of memory and spirit—within the narrative. The olive tree, now uprooted—its body dead—still extends its branches far beyond the borders of the Occupied Territories. Its limbs stretch out and reach across like a gossamer embrace, beckoning for peace. Like the patient resilience of a cactus tree, it cannot be conquered or colonized. Its symbolism rests within the land, thousands of years old. Its stories are every place and no place. We find them where we look. We find them if we can see.

Doris Bittar: The “Stripes & Stars” series was triggered by the tragic events surrounding 9-11. The paintings are based on the interaction between non-figurative and symbolic references. Islamic matrix, floral or calligraphic patterns cover the folded, waving or static American flags. Following the fateful day of September 11, along with a deep sense of mourning and loss, the American and the Arabic cultures had jarringly merged within me. My feelings toward both conflicted and coincided. I felt a sense of loyalty, protection and anger toward both cultures as their symbols and patterns layered in my mind seamlessly. The paintings embody a dichotomy that is oppositional as well as ambiguous. These paintings ask questions about what has changed and what has yet to be expressed.

Hanaa Al-wardi, is an Iraqi American, multi-media studio artist in Pasadena. The artist received both MA and MFA degrees in Fine Art from Claremont Graduate School in1990. She is very active in exhibiting her work locally, nationally and internationally.

Her work incorporates political, social, and environmental issues. The artist’s work also includes oil and acrylic paintings and heavy texture on canvas, paintings on metal and wood, ceramic, and painting on ceramic surfaces. The Artist has also completed artwork on commission for public and commercial projects throughout Los Angeles. The Artist’s work is permanently on exhibit in the HA Gallery.

Nuha Sinno: Twenty years of immigration life have given Nuha Sinno ample opportunity for free expression. At this stage in her career, she is taken by the notion of the Arabic language as art and of her work as memories in translation. She is eager to pay tribute to her love for the language” I am grateful’ she says, “for this rich legacy of beauty and elegance that is the Arabic alphabet.” Memories in Translation” is a collection of three works showing intricate lines and colors that coalesce into abstract rendition of Arabic words and their meanings. These rich constructions speak of her life as an Arab Muslim woman. Born in Beirut Lebanon, Nuha Sinno is a graduate of the Lebanese University of Fine Art as an Interior Designer, and worked in this feild at the onset of her career. Now as an Arab American, She has participated in several group shows, and has been active in community events. This exhibition of her latest pieces speaks to her continued commitment to Arab culture, more specifically, its calligraphy. She currently has a studio in Los Angeles.

Rheim Alkadhi: Rheim Alkadhi was born in 1973 in Buffalo, New York to an Iraqi father and an Anglo-American mother. Residing in Iraq during the 70’s, her family quietly returned to the States at the start of the Iran- Iraq War. In 1991 she traveled to Palestine/Israel with a Quaker organization called Fellowship of Reconcilliation. She received a BFA and MFA from CalArts and UC Irvine. Since then her work has been shown in the U.S. and Canada.

Huguette Caland: Beirut-born Huguette Caland's recent works are exclusively linear in composition, and represent a distillation and refinement of past experiences. In undertaking this process of purification in her art, Huguette focuses on the power of the brushstroke in itself to invent new forms. In exploring this new direction, significant fragments of line from the past have provided the seed. She has shown widely in the international scene for the past few decades.

back to past exhibitions page