Hello everyone!
“Of Refuge, Of Home” closes this Friday, November 4th at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery. It has been a fantastic experience with great feedback and support! Thanks for everyone who has made it out.
For those of you who haven’t been (but have meant to) – the Jerusalem Fund is open from 9-5 or after hours by appointment:
The Jerusalem Fund
2425 Virginia Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20037
Let me know if you are interested in seeing it before the show closes!
Thanks!
-Adam
I’m excited to announce that I’ll be taking part in a discussion at GW about Arab art along with:
Omar Ibrahim: a Rapper from the Middle East
Dahlia Nayeef: a handcrafter from Baghdad
Danah Abdulla:Creative Director for Kalimat magazine
Please come and join if you are in the area or interested. It will be great!
Friday, October 28th
6:30 -> 8:30 PM
Marvin Center 404 (800 21st Street NW)
Thanks!
Adam
I just wanted to say thanks for a great opening night for “Of Refuge, Of Home” last Friday! It was a wonderful time and if you missed it, the show continues throughout the month of October at the Jerusalem Fund in Foggy Bottom.
And an extra big THANK YOU to:
The Foggy Bottom Current – September 28th – Page 27 which featured a wonderful caption & photo about the event.
WAMU/NPR – Art’s Beat – October 3rd with a shout by Sean Rameswaram out Monday morning!
The Express newspaper who had a photo and caption of Diptych 1952 on Page E15
And, of course, all the awesome shout outs by some great friends & family on Twitter & Facebook!
-A
Hello everyone!
My opening at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery is tomorrow from 6-8, hope to see y’all there!
Thanks,
Adam
Title: Sitti
Size: 22 x 40 x 19
Medium: Acrylic, beads, paper, found objects, lights on trunk & wood
Sitti refers grandmother in Palestinian Arabic but more literally means “my lady”. And without a doubt my grandmother was some lady.
Always graceful, no matter how old and stooped she became, Sitti embodied that imagery of that noble yet determined Arabic woman. I carry in my mind’s eye maybe a thousand legends – she sang like an opera singer, spoke like the most educated polyglot, had a will like a soldier, the temper of a firecracker, and a life tragic, beautiful, and complicated. In al-Nabka, the 1948 civil war between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, she faced the death of her husband, her son, and many many others and transformed herself from bourgeois housewife into refugee and breadwinner. She then brought my dad to United States, worked till he had his education & became an adult.
We crossed paths at the end of her life and the beginning of mine. Sitti to me was that link to a mythical homeland. She grew a fig tree in her yard, picked roses & mint, and sang. Habibi! Elbi! she would cry as she laughed and threw stories of war, donkeys, people I never knew, and places forgotten.
This work attempts to channel that nobility, mystery, and warmth that I felt as a youth while evoking the competing, sometimes contradictory legends she always told me.
Title: Diptych 1952 (or Mom & Dad)
Medium: Acrylic & Ink on Canvas & Suitcase
So why parents? Most of my work in the series has concerned the elderly, the mythical, or the long since deceased…. Here, instead, I followed another sort of “mythical” past- that of my parents as kids.
The unifying part of the piece is the suitcase. Indeed, it was travel that brought them together. My dad from Palestine, my mom from her small town Cleburne to the nearby city of Fort Worth. In a sense, it was a suitcase that made my parents, my parents at all.
See below for zoomed in details:
Title: Granddaddy (or Jack Daniel)
Medium: Acrylic, License plate on Medicine Cabinet Mirror
Size: 23 in. x 28.5 in.
Yes. To your first question - Jack Daniel, was the name of my grandfather on my mom’s side not some Tennessee whiskey..
He was born in 1918 in Cleburne, Texas. I knew him better as Granddaddy. My strongest memories of him were his glowing blue eyes and his long “Gooood nights!”. Yet, there was a part of him that is a mystery in my memories – a myth as much as any of those strange Palestinian traveling merchants or early 19th century Texan farmers that I had painted before.
I was a young child when he was around, so he never spoke too much about his infantry service in World War II. In fact, regretfully all I can deduce now from his time were a few photographs and a short one page account written at the urging of his sister. He seemed to have participated in the Battle of the Bulge, helped liberate Germany and Czechoslovakia. His feet froze and would cause him problems for the rest of his life. It was harsh, difficult, and certainly life changing. Yet he survived it all, defending his land, his country…. Alive, with a wider – if more terrible – view of the world.
And there it was – this image of him I had to capture: a young 26-year-old with a twinkle in his eye that would last him all his years and beyond… Him smiling, glowing eye, cloaked in the garbs of his military service.
