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MUSIC & ARTS
Curator Ahmed Mansour welcomed more than 150 art enthusiasts to the Museum of the Palestinian People on Oct. 7 for the opening of Mary Hazboun’s solo exhibition “The Art of Weeping.” Attendees spilled out onto the Adams Morgan sidewalk, next door to Middle East Books and More and this magazine’s offices in Washington, DC.
To provide context to the title of the exhibit, Mansour told attendees that he’s learned it is important to recognize and process grief. He recalled enduring Israel’s 2014 bombardment of Gaza, which killed 2,256 Palestinians. Worried about his son’s safety, Mansour’s father forbade him from leaving the house to attend the funeral of his neighbor—killed as she prepared breakfast for her family. Mansour argued he just had to go to the cemetery and mourn with his community. He demanded the right to grieve. To mourn and process loss is an act of resistance for Palestinians, Mansour argued.
“As we approach the 75th anniversary of the Nakba,” Mansour said, “we also are beginning to mourn the loss of the generation of Nakba survivors. How many tears have never been shed? How many graves haven’t been visited? How many losses have never been recognized?” He called on Palestinians to acknowledge their losses. “First grieve, then march,” he urged. “This is our time. We’ve been marching for 75 years...Our pain is our fuel. We’re not broken people. We’re resilient and we can celebrate what we lived through,” he concluded.
The following day, Bethlehem-born artist Mary Hazboun presented her gripping artist talk, providing her rapt audience, sitting on the floor of the museum, with “food for thought.” Hazboun was born and raised in Bethlehem until 2004, when her father decided to move their family to the U.S. in order to give his kids a safer life, free from living under military occupation. “It was a forced migration. I never wanted to leave,” Hazboun confided.
After chewing through multiple mouth guards and dislocating her jaw, her dentist finally asked her, “What happened to you?” She discovered that despite a successful education and career in Chicago, she was suppressing her pain and grief. Triggering events in the day and dark dreams in the night were causing her great harm. “Trauma manifests itself in our bodies and can lead to chronic pain,” she disclosed.
In 2015 Hazboun took a class on “Women, War and Resistance” taught by Prof. Laila Farah at DePaul University. To cope during upsetting class discussions of gender-based violence, the Lebanese civil war and other conflicts women face, Hazboun began to doodle. She continued to sketch at home and she discovered, “For the first time I felt safe. I liked how it felt.” She began to navigate through her traumatic experiences and record them with images. When Hazboun showed Farah her work, the professor declared, “There’s something there.”
Hazboun ended up earning a Master’s Degree with a focus on the resistance of Palestinian women in the diaspora. “My drawings created a space for me to grieve,” she said. She also gained self-acceptance. “It’s OK for me to feel broken,” she said. “I am healing when I draw. Art heals me in ways I don’t completely understand.”
Hazboun observed that Israel has tried to dehumanize or erase Palestinians. Palestinians are not terrorists and women are not victims, she emphasized. Even back in the 1920s, she noted, Palestinian women were fighting against colonization.
A few years ago, on Palestinian
Mother’s Day, the famous Brazilian-
Lebanese political cartoonist Carlos
Latuff shared one of Hazboun’s images on Twitter—and her art went viral. Attendees at this exhibit see why.
Before opening up her talk for questions and comments, Hazboun observed, “I have not come across a single
Palestinian who is tired of telling their story. Art is my way to tell our story.
Others use film, poetry or music. I use my art as resistance.”
Mary Hazboun’s important exhibition will be on view at the Museum of the Palestinian People until the end of March 2023. Follow her on Instagram @maryhazboun48, or visit her website <www.maryhazboun.com>. —Delinda C. Hanley
Mary Hazboun uses her art to heal and tell her story.
STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY
The Rise of a New Generation of North African Photographers
On Sept. 8, the Middle East Institute’s Arts and Culture Center hosted a panel discussion featuring award-winning photographers Imane Djamil from Morocco and Fethi Sahraoui from Algeria. They are among 15 photographers whose works were featured in MEI’s recent exhibition, “More Than Your Eyes Can See.”
Laila Abdul-Hadi Jadallah curated the exhibition of contemporary photography from the Arab world, which was co-organized with Tribe, a non-profit publication and platform focused on contemporary photography and moving images from the Middle East and beyond.
These photographers are “redefining the practice of photography in the Middle East and go beyond incorporating photojournalism and fine arts photography,” said MEI’s Arts and Culture Center director Lyne Sneige. “Their diverse work, which ex-
