"We were not allowed to paint in red, green, black and white: The Palestinian flag was forbidden. And the colors of the Palestinian flag were forbidden,"
"He was trying to convince us not to do any political art, saying, 'Why don't you paint nice flowers or a nude figure? I will even buy from you.'"
"Even if you paint a watermelon, it will be confiscated,"
"This drawing is from [a] Palestinian children's folklore stories book, and it talks about the story of a mythical toddler who gets out of a watermelon and can speak and act as an adult, It seems that this is not a myth; the children of Gaza are being forced into being adults, adults who are living through hell."
In the 1980s Israeli censorship forbade the Palestinian flag and its colors, preventing artists from using red, green, black and white. After paintings were confiscated, an Israeli officer ordered exhibitions to receive prior approval and urged artists to avoid political art, even offering to buy depictions of flowers or nudes. The officer warned that works using flag colors, including watermelons, would be confiscated. Artists adopted the watermelon as a symbolic act of resistance, and watermelon imagery spread across walls, T-shirts, posters and galleries. A folklore image of a toddler emerging from a watermelon was linked to Gaza children forced into adulthood.
Read at www.dw.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]