6 Palestinian makers and designers you should know

12 June 2020

Craft is a tool for renewal in the hands of these creatives, who are seeking to rewrite the global narrative about their home

Laura Snoad

12 June 2020

Stone Matters in Jerico, AAU Anastas, 2017

In a nation accustomed to fighting for its place in the world, a group of creatives are taking it upon themselves to rethink the traditions that define Palestinian identity, from tatreez embroidery to stone carving. Here are six names from Palestine and its diaspora to watch. For more about contemporary making in Palestine, pick up a copy of Crafts issue No. 281.

Jordan Nassar

In the work of New York-based artist Jordan Nassar, a second generation Palestinian-American, colourful landscapes peep out of hand-stitched patterns, an exploration of the ‘inherited nostalgia’ of his father, the diaspora experience and the second-hand images he had of the Levant before he’d witnessed it in person. For a solo show at Dubai’s The Third Line gallery in 2019, Nassar collaborated with women in Hebron and in a refugee camp in Bethlehem, finishing pieces that they’d started and riffing on their use of colour. For The Sea Beneath Our Eyes, another 2019 show at the Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, he collaborated with craftspeople from across the region of different ethnicities and backgrounds to furnish an entire apartment, with Hebron glass and khamsa wall hangings made in Jaffa sitting alongside woodwork from Bethlehem, basketwork by Ethiopian immigrants and Armenian ceramics. His work is currently on display at the inaugural Asia Society Triennial in New York.

Faissal El-Malak

Dubai-based Palestinian fashion designer Faissal El-Malak is among those inspired by tatreez, the Palestian style of embroidery known for highly localised patterns and styles inspired by everyday life, which became a symbol of national identity during the First Intifada of the late 1980s. In his work, he fuses Middle Eastern weaving and embroidery traditions with contemporary silhouettes. ‘These textiles and objects were something tangible that I could refer to, even though I was living far away from home,’ says the designer.

Hollow Forms vessels, Dima Srouji and Ali and Marwan Twam, 2017, blown glass

Dima Srouji

For her project Hollow Forms, architect Dima Srouji worked with father-and-son glassblowers Ali and Marwan Twam in the village of Jaba, who she met through the Ramallah-based organisation Riwaq Center for Architectural Conservation, which rehabilitates and reactivates historic villages. The handblown vessels, designed using architectural software, nod to the seeds, plants and animals of the landscape, including the spiny cactus fruit. Through her research, she discovered that Palestinian glassblowing traditions date back thousands of years, nurtured by the silica-rich river sand. ‘Even Palestinians are not really aware how deep our rootedness with glass goes,’ she says.

Elias and Yousef Anastas

Architecture practice AAU Anastas, founded by brothers Elias and Yousef Anastas, is on a mission to introduce traditional stone-cutting and masonry techniques back into Palestinian buildings. For the ongoing project Stone Matters, the duo fused age-old Palestinian stereotomy (the art of carving stone into specific shapes to achieve different structural properties) with the digital, to create ornate lace-like structures that are designed on a computer, cut by robots and then finished by hand. The brothers also set up the craft-led furniture company, Local Industries, which designs products in dialogue with artisans. These are produced at a historic factory that they remodelled, which also offers studio space for artists, materials labs and workshops and courses in the hope of boosting an industry limited by decades of occupation.

Majd Abdel Hamid

Majd Abdel Hamid embroiders moments of political importance such as the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement that carved up the Middle East’s ancient lands, and Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian shopkeeper who set himself on fire in December 2010 and started the Arab Spring. One of his works, Son, this is a waste of time, uses white thread on white canvas, a stark departure from the norm. It was named after the reaction he received from one older woman. ‘It’s almost the “anti-dress”,’ he says of his subtle technique, which uses meditative repetition to highlight the process rather than result. ‘It’s not about memory, it’s just about the act, the medium and labour.’

Disarming Design from Palestine

The design collective sells a range of designed and crafted objects through its website, including glass pieces (ranging from Christmas baubles to glass ‘tears’ that embody the painful decline of the Hebron glass industry owing to the Israeli occupation), woven bird baskets made by visually impaired people in Gaza, and traditional keffiyeh scarfs. In 2019, it set up a design school in Birzeit on the central West Bank, and has gone on to launch a two-year master’s programme with the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, focused on design and craft practices in situations of oppression.

This is an edited version of a Crafts magazine article

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6 Palestinian makers and designers you should know

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