New book brings the works of Palestinian artist Nabil Anani to a wider audience

Stunning collection of images and words celebrates a Palestinian master of composition, colour and symbolism 

by Susannah Tarbush, London

(an Arabic version of this article appeared in Al-Hayat newspaper on 15 January 2019)

The Palestinian artist Nabil Anani, born in the town of Latroun in 1943, has had a long and productive career as a painter, ceramicist, sculptor and art teacher. He has taken part in group and solo exhibitions in many parts of the world and his works are held in museums and private collections.

And yet, according to two of his biggest admirers, Sulieman Mleahat and Martin Mulloy, Aman has not fully received the recognition he deserves. Their determination to bring Anani to wider public attention has now resulted in the publication in London, by Saqi Books, of the beautiful book Nabil Anani: Palestine, Land and People. The book is co-edited by Mleahat and Mulloy, who have been friends since the days when Mleahat lived in London and they were introduced to each other by a mutual friend.

The 176-page volume contains high-quality reproductions of more than 150 works by Anani. The cover illustration is Anani’s 2013 painting Palestinian Village.

The pictures in the book are grouped into three sections: Land, People, and Mixed Media. They are complemented by substantial essays from six leading Middle Eastern art historians: Rana Anani, Lara Khaldi, Bashir Makhoul, Nada Shabout, Dr Housni Alkhateeb Shehadeh and Dr Tina Sherwell.

The images show the range and variety of Anani’s work, and his immense talents in composition, use of colour, and symbolism. Many are in fresh, bright colours while others are in more sombre hues. Some echo a continuing Palestinian identity and tradition, others are more directly political such as the haunting images of Palestinians queueing at the checkpoint at Qalandia, or standing in a line waiting to see their relatives in prison, as in the 2015 painting Visiting Hour.

Visiting Hour (2015) © Nabil Anani

Anani works in many media in addition to paint, including wool, embroidery, plaster, leather, wood, leather, copper, dyes, and concrete. The works vary greatly in size. Some are relatively small, other are large and extend over double pages of the book, such as the striking and graceful mosaic mural Ramallah Martyrs’ Memorial (2013).  

The Palestinian prize-winning poet Mourid Barghouti has contributed a characteristically eloquent foreword to the volume. He writes:

“In a society living in catastrophic conditions, the artist does not have the luxury of being preoccupied with a single vision. Perhaps this can clarify the enigma of Nabil Anani, the artist and sculptor who opened his eyes to the Palestinian Nakba, which continues to generate more Nakbas."

Barghouti adds: "The works of Nabil Anani simultaneously perform the roles of the novelist, poet, historian, architect, musician and restorer of memory.  His works grasp at moments from people’s lives, their hills, olive groves, homes, their grandmothers’ embroidered gowns, their weddings and funerals, as if their creator fears the demise of all these things.

Bride (2005) © Nabil Anani

“In his paintings, Anani is a novelist because he tells the story of a group of people too brutalized to tell their own story. He is a poet when he seizes a single detail here and there: a glancing eye, the tilt of a neck or miles of threatened trees; the frailty in a body in one instance, its amazing power in another. He is a historian when he chronicles through art the events of Palestinian life, its joys and sorrows, the various ways it disappears in spite of joy, and manifests itself in spite of death.”

According to Barghouti, “Anani, the genuine artisan, desires to be unambiguous in his celebration of Palestinian art and nature, as if he were hosting a celebration in which life itself is the guest of honour.”

The book’s Palestinian co-editor Sulieman Mleahat lived in the UK for 28 years after winning a scholarship at the age of ten to the famous Pestalozzi International Village for young people in East Sussex, in the south of England.

He did his university and postgraduate studies in international development in the UK and then, wanting to work with Palestinian refugees, returned to live in Ramallah eight years ago. He is an education and arts specialist working with the non-governmental organisation (NGO) American Near East Refugee Aid in Palestine (ANERA) establishing kindergarten schools and training teachers. At the same time Mleahat supports Palestinian artists in exhibiting their work and has curated in many exhibitions in Ramallah and participated in many art fairs in the Middle East.

Nabil Anani in his studio in Ramallah, 2017

Martin Mulloy had a career in publishing, and was for ten years a director at the BBC. He has lived and worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and travelled widely throughout the region. He now works independently pursing educational and media projects in China and elsewhere.

The two co-editors describe their initiation and implementation of the Anani book project as “a labour of love for us both” The seeds of the project lie in an exhibition of Anani’s solo calligraphic exhibition “Art Into Script” held in 2007 in the gallery of the legendary Foyles bookshop in central London. The two subsequently travelled to Ramallah to meet Anani in his home and studio.

Lynn Gaspard, publisher of Saqi Books, was enthusiastic about Mleahat and Mulloy’s proposal for a book on Anani. Publication was made possible by sponsorship from the A M Qattan Foundation, Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC), Palestinian Ministry of Culture, the Palestinian Museum, and Paltel.

The book’s six illuminating essays explore many facets of Anani’s work and life. Bashir Makhoul's essay is entitled “The Inability to Forget and the Promise of Memory.” He writes that Anani “has made an outstanding contribution to the development of Palestinian art, and he has played an explicit role in the construction of a modern national identity, particularly in relation to national memory.”

Anani is “constructing a visual narrative from a memory that is living in the menacing shadows cast by the trauma of the Nakba and its continuation in the occupation and ongoing Israeli colonisation of Palestine.”

There is a continuous need in the work “to search for traces of the past, to seek restoration, draw conclusions and pass on messages and symbols of what has been lost in the hope that the Palestinians will one day find it …. This idyllic re-imagining of the past imbued with nostalgia becomes a speculative image of the future – an aspiration for what is to come rather than a memorial for the past.” 

In 2012 Anani started a series of works Life Before 1948 based on photographs taken of families around Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century.  by photographers including the Palestinian Khalil Raad. “What really haunts me about these photographs, and what I think Anani captures in his paintings, is the fact that they were taken before the Nakba, They are pictures of unity, of undivided families in a homeland that was about to be torn apart by war and colonial occupation.”

Ayyoub family from Safad (1948) 2014 © Nabil Anani

In her essay “How Childhood Captivated an Artist” the artist’s daughter Rana Anani writes of Nabil’s childhood in Halhul, where his parents moved in 1942. Halhul is particularly known for its grape production.

“Whenever Anani speaks of his childhood in Halhul, his eyes sparkle and his face lights up with great passion,” writes Rana. “We cannot underestimate the extent of the influence of his childhood in that village on the art he was to produce later in life.”

In 1965 Anani’s father sent him to university in Cairo, but was furious when he found out Nabil had insisted on registering at art college, and he cut off his finding. Nabil’s sister Adla who was working in Kuwait, then supported him financially. Anani graduated in Fine Art from Alexandria University in 1969 and returned to Palestine to join UNRWA as an art teacher.

Dr Tina Sherwell examines Anani’s work in the 1970s and 1980s under the harsh restrictions of the Israel occupation, which imposed censorship on artists. In this atmosphere Anani had his first exhibition at the YMCA in Jerusalem in 1972 and at this time he met the artist Sliman Mansour who would become a lifelong friend and colleague. Anani was very active in the formation of the League of Palestinian Artists.

Motherhood II (1995)  © Nabil Anani

During the first intifada which started in December 1987, The New Visions Group was set up by Anani, Tayseer Barakat, Sliman Mansour and Vera Tamari. With a Palestinian shunning of imported Israeli products, including oil paints and canvas these artists began to work with natural local materials such as wood, clay, mud and leather.” Lara Khaldi notes how the New Visions Group moved away from “committed art” into more experimental work.

Nadia Shabout in her chapter “Modernism, Palestine and the Arab World” writes: “It is particularly interesting to understand the intersection of imagination between a Palestinian artist like Anani and, for example, the Iraqi Dia al-Azzawi whose work engaged with Palestine frequently.”

Housni Alkhateeb Shehada’s essay “History, Calligraphy and Landscape in the Works of Nabil Anani (2000 – 2017)” examines Anani’s art works within their political context. He writes: “Undoubtedly. Nabil Anani’s close engagement with the exhausting political situation has for years been reflected in his works.”   He examines Anani’s love of calligraphy and the recurring appearance of landscape and olive trees in his work. “The olive tree is perhaps the most important symbol used by Anani in various works of drawing, painting, sculpture and other genres.”

At a time when interest in Palestinian arts and culture is growing, in Palestine itself and far beyond, the publication of Nabil Anani: Palestine, Land and People is very much to be welcomed. It is truly one of the most moving and visually-stunning books to have appeared in 2018.