seen from United States
seen from United States
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Palestinian comic exhibition, Enter the Mulberry Tree and Fly Free, opens in Leeds
The first exhibition of comic art from Palestine of its kind to take place outside of the Middle East and North Africa region, opens at Left Bank in Leeds today
Naji al-Ali
I don’t feel like I can have a discussion about personal artistic influences without mentioning Naji al-Ali’s work.
Al-Ali is the most influential Palestinian cartoonist, full stop. Politics are easier to digest in comic form, and al-Ali was especially masterful at tackling Middle Eastern politics and the frustration that Palestinians collectively felt daily due to the never-ending occupation. He was so influential that, even though he died in the mid-1980s, you can still purchase necklaces of his iconic spiky-haired character Hanthala. His work is still regularly talked about and aspired to.
Looking at the work now, I’m sorry to say that many of his comics are still relevant today, even though 30+ years have passed since their creation. The Middle East is a place that sees a lot of strife and negative “action,” but for multiple reasons I won’t get into here, problems don’t resolve and instead simply migrate; the overall ailments remain after all these years.
Al-Ali was critical of Israel—he was exiled from his hometown in 1948 and lived under occupation, that’s not terribly surprising. But he didn’t let Arab or Western governments off the hook, either, and really fought for the Palestinian refugees—and poorer Arabs more broadly—who he felt were too often used as bargaining chips in the world. His visual representation of a government official is literally a sluglike, naked man.
His work comprises the first comics I ever “read,” through reprints in a newsletter for Palestinian Americans. I was probably 4 or 5. No, I didn’t understand them, and yes, I found them terrifying. But also intriguing. They sparked something in me.
If you’re interested in learning more about al-Ali and his work, Verso Books released a compilation a few years ago that I found to be a great primer and also useful in its interpretations of each comic.
By the way, I apologize for my somewhat crummy photos in this post, which were all taken from this book (but check out the subtitles!).
-Marguerite Dabaie
