Jerusalem the capital of Arab culture and consciousness

Across the previous decades, Arab culture has failed, in all its constituent elements, to effect significant change in the collective thought of Arab societies, while Jerusalem has not been afforded its due to express itself or even the suitable political movement to arrest the process of stripping the city of its Arab identity.

Jerusalem, with its sad community, with its narrow streets, arches, minarets, cupolas and inscriptions, with its stone engravings which together attest to the deep roots of Arab civilization; a woman with her faded embroidered garment selling vegetables at the corner of Damascus Gate (Bab al-Amoud), and the smell of thyme, saffron, almonds and incense, a memory which the occupier is striving to eliminate by compulsion, a memory which is yet to become instilled in the consciousness of the young generations.

A series of paintings have expressed the longing for these feelings, where the works have been divided into three or more parts. Vertically, the side spaces convey a sense of oppression, represented in the separation wall, the siege, and the checkpoints. There is a band at the top of the painting that is confined between the walls, impeding extension, growth and movement; a siege of life inside the ghettoes of the city, the village, the camp, and the human person.

Nabil Anani