As for the monochromatic engravings and etchings by Walid Abu Shaqra who grew up in Israel, they may be best viewed in contrast to the monochromatic pencil and chalk drawings by the Jewish settler artist Anna Ticho who repeatedly focused in her work on representing ‘the place’ of the native other.

Like those of other Jewish settler artists, Ticho’s drawings of the native’s place, have all been realized from the high viewpoint of the ‘perspective cavalière’. Executed during the British Mandate, a period known among Palestinians for its affluence and prosperity, the Czechoslovakian-born artist never ceased to portray these places Palestinians called home as ruins and abandoned dwellings.

Taking only four of her pencil and brown chalk drawings that depict specific Palestinian sites such as ‘Jerusalem City Wall’ ( c.1933) ‘The Old City’ (c. 1934) ‘Bethany’ (1935) and ‘Jericho’ (1940) ( Ticho House Collection, Jerusalem) one can see that the settler artist could only view ‘the place’ from the dominating position of a ‘perspective cavalière’. With the exception of her ‘Bethany’ in which we see a diminutive, static and lifeless figure in the foreground as a device to highlight the monumentality of the ruined village, the living place of Palestinian Arabs appears devoid of all signs of life. Here, the mythical ‘impressions’ the viewer receives are those of an ancient place crying out to be ‘redeemed’, which is to say appropriated. Like Palestinian landscapes by other Jewish settler artists who preceded her, Ticho’s drawings con¬firm the validity of the slogan, ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’.

In contrast, Abu Shakra’s etchings are not the outsider’s interpretation of a place but rather the insider’s intuitive reading of its intimate specificities recognized by their place-names. ‘Hakoorat el-Loz’ (c.1979), ‘View from al-Batten’ (1980), ‘An Olive Tree in Ein-Jarrar’ (1980) ‘Mintarat al-Batten’ (1981) are all place-names recognized only by the native. In this place, each tree, each stone, each wild plant, has traditionally been endowed with a collective feeling that urban people may reserve for human friends. Thus Abu Shakra’s references to seemingly obscure place-names, always appearing in his titles, that are nowhere to be found on Israeli maps, are not unlike the villager’s manner in introducing the outsider to close friends. Emanating from the realm of illiterate shepherds, the artist does not intend his place-name to provide the ethnographer’s catalogue with facts any more than he seeks by his figurative style to impress the art connoisseur.

Traditional in his figurative rendering of his subject, Abu Shakra re¬flects the intense experience of a native’s memory. While his work continues to be haunted by the absence of its natives, at every turn we sense a hint of a human presence. Through such intimations Abu Shakra articulates his people’s metaphors.

Here in black and white the roots of an ancient olive tree delve deeply into the dark soil; there, a long-trodden path leads uphill to where the cool breeze of a summer afternoon blows; a clearing at midday popping up with rocks is the focus of a series of prints; we also see a freshly ploughed field as it looks in the moonlight. Stubborn walls of ancient stones hanging raggedly together cross the background of one print and in the foreground of another bushes, thorns, and wild flowers continue to grow in the cracks of scattered stones belonging to villages that have been destroyed.

Despite their masterly rendering in a conventional method of visual representation, Abu Shakra’s landscapes accord equal importance to all the scenery’s elements. Foreground and background seem interchangeable. Every detail is known and individual. Giving an Arabic place-name to a print
portraying a certain group of trees, a clearing, or a heap of stones and thistle echoes the villager’s
intimate relationship with the simple elements that constitute the homeland.

Always printed in black, an Abu Shakra landscape, carrying an obscure place-name only a native villager could recognize, seems to act as an extension of a secret script. Perhaps that is why it is not so strange that some of his prints do not exceed the size of an identity card. Through such an intimate image, the land’s traces could be carried in a pocket, just as pilgrims carry amulets and personal icons. 
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In conclusion, I hope this general discussion may have cast some light on what has been referred to in context of this event as ‘contested space’. By sharing with you a few thoughts on what I believe to be the ‘subject quality’ of the problem, I hope I have contributed to a better appreciation of what has been called its ‘object quality’. Bringing up some examples of two-dimensional art was meant to recall how the sister art of architecture allows a fuller ‘sculptural reading’ of the art proposed in the current show.

By recognizing the affiliation between ‘space’ and ‘place’ in Israeli and Palestinian art and culture, one may see how the geographic space inspiring the Jewish settler artists has been the same that inspired the Palestinian native artists. The difference in the works of each national group, however, is not only a difference in the tradition of visual expression, but it is a difference in outlook between the possessor and the dispossessed. They could not have seen the place from the same point of view. On one side, there are those who continue to observe the ever-changing borders of the place from the heights of fortified walls and towers; on the other, there are those undefeated who are holding on by their teeth to the last bits of their ancestral land.

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Kamal Boullata is a Palestinian painter and writer. He is the editor of Belonging and Globalisation: Critical Essays in Contemporary Art and Culture (2008) and Palestinian Art: 1850-2005 (Feb.2009).