Razan & Her Art

What? Where? Who? When?

Oil on canvas

War is just chillin'

Soft sculpture

“It makes you an intimate witness and an accessory to a deception that you can do nothing about. Nailing you in your complexity.” - Dave Hickey.

Growing up, the war against Palestine was always on T.V, making me feel hopeless, angry, and vulnerable like a bag of boiling water. My tea bag project was influenced by Muhammad Al Durrah, a 12 year old boy and his father were holding onto each other while hiding behind a cement cylinder, where Israeli soldiers shot gunfire at them, hurting them both, but only killing the boy, where he fell on his father's lap. This video clip of the incident went viral, where Muhammad died as a shaheed (martyr). The tea bag is a metaphor of social conversations in every household I visit, where one way or another, the conversation steers towards politics, whether you add sugar in your tea or not. I am using a camouflage fabric for this project to be close to the tea bag fabric by representing war. It is soaked in blood like material to show the never ending bloodshed that is being dripped on rocks, the basic natural weapon the Palestinians use to protect themselves, and the cement is to represent their home ashes.

Poem on wall:

Justice on earth would make demons weep if

they heard about it

And would make the dead laugh if they saw it

For jail and death are for the wrongdoers if they

are little

While glory, honor and wealth are for the

criminals if they are big

The thief of a flower is blamed and despised

While the thief of a farmland is heralded as bold

and serious

The murderer of the flesh is killed for his deed