#saj issa

[mzr-hsh]

Saj Issa - Crocodile Crown

[huariqueje]

Have You Ever Been to Palestine? - Saj Issa , 2023.

American ,Palestinian , b. 1994 -

Oil on canvas paper, 16 x 20 in.

[mentaltimetraveller]

Saj Issa, Poppy Painting, 2024, oil on canvas, 96 × 71 5⁄8″.

[topcat77]

Saj Issa

Poppy Painting, 2024

Oil on canvas

[bossymarmalade]

Saj Issa, “Have You Ever Been to Palestine” (2023)

[miaqc1]

Saj Issa, “Have You Ever Been to Palestine” (2023), oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches

[saddayfordemocracy]

Saj Issa, “Americana Hammam” Series

The artist is interested in late capitalism and its violence, and how brand intervention in societal spaces has contributed to the cultural erasure of diasporic communities. 

Issa’s recent work continues her abiding interest in pattern. The Americana Hammam series consists of wall based two-dimensional works that feature silkscreened and hand painted patterns on ceramic tiles with corporate logos on the surface. 

The blue patterns are appropriated from traditional vessels and tiles from countries including Turkey, Palestine, and China while the logos are iconic brands well familiar to a global audience. The artist chooses the brands—Nike, Caterpillar, Chase, Coca Cola—for their lax corporate policies around global warming and climate change, thus exposing to viewers how we are all implicated in this crisis.

Issa grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, near Ferguson, where the Black Lives Matter movement sparked, and made summer visits to her grandparents’ home in the West Bank of Ramallah, Palestine. “I love these two communities immensely,” Issa said. “Growing up between those places, it’s impossible not to make the connections of injustice and for my art to not be expressive of those two homes.”

While visiting Palestine a few years ago, Issa recalled driving around the West Bank, noticing new street signs. She realized the signposts customarily written in Hebrew, Arabic, and English featured the names of towns as they would be identified in Israel. For Issa, reinserting the descriptions on signs or painting native vegetation in occupied Palestinian territories is a way of preserving language, land, and culture.

“The signs in this work, similarly to the negation of Palestinian villages, after so long of rewriting or unsolicited decisions made on behalf of our societies, influences the memory of our heritage,” she said.

All photos by Ian Byers-Gamber, courtesy the artist

[hyperallergic]

In the work of LA-based artist Saj Issa, finely painted designs reveal ornate patterns and wordmarks. There’s a quick impulse to get lost in the first impression: The curves and blended tones on ceramic tile pull viewers in, but a deeper message is embedded within them. Issa illustrates the cultural erasure imposed by Western interventions generated by commercial logos, language, and branding.

Integrating Islamic art and architectural styles with corporate branding, the artist examines globalization’s impact on intersecting identities of the diaspora.