Crush Walls.
the backstory of images inspired by Palestinian communities
Welcome to Wandering Home, I’m so glad you’re here!
As you may know, I recently launched an Etsy Shop called ShelbyMathisStudios that I’m keeping open only through the month of May. It’s a shop of my fine art and photography that I’m using to fund a much-needed sabbatical I’m taking this fall. If you missed any previous Wandering Home letters, you can read more about this in A new offering (my approach to sabbatical and art sales) and Art as resistance (my philosophy of art as a tool, language, and weapon).
I want to share with you some art from my Etsy shop along with how or why I made them because the backstory of pieces are as much a part of the work as the ink or image or paper. I want to show you how I draw connections between places and people, and build bridges between communities, and how my work is often inspired and influenced by art, travel, people, and current events. I want you to know the context I make my work in and about. I want you to see the deeper stories that I see when I look at my body of work.
Last week, I shared two prints inspired by Mercy Project’s work in Ghana, Africa. This week, let’s wander for a moment to the Middle East. You with me?
Context Matters.
From besieged Gaza to divided Al-Quds to holy Al-Aqsa to disenfranchised refugee camps to hunted down journalists to occupied West Bank to the diaspora and beyond: Palestinian humanity matters. Palestinian lives and stories matter. Palestinian liberation matters. Palestinian history matters. Palestinian safety matters. Palestinian trauma matters. Palestinian peace matters.
Though I've been a part of this conversation for years and I still often am overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation. When tensions flare, as they often do, I am not shocked by the violence and aggressive force and attacks on Palestinians, as I've witnessed it on the ground with my own eyes.
Even if we haven’t seen it up close, the loss of life, freedom, and security of millions of people should move and grieve us. We shouldn't just watch and point fingers and skim biased headlines (if events even make the headlines) and settle back into a comfortable routine of react-fizzle-ignore, our manicured brand of performative peacekeeping. We shouldn’t simply say "we’re heartbroken and we strongly condemn". We shouldn’t look away and carry on.
Even when I'm afraid we won't see it, I say: may justice roll down. Again and again and again. I rarely have to wonder if my art or my words or my experiences in Palestinian communities are relevant. The reality is, there’s no end in sight to the occupation that is the source of this “conflict”.
Yesterday, May 15, 2022, marked the 74th anniversary of The Nakba (The Catastrophe). Nakba Day commemorates the collective mourning of the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians during the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The Nakba continues. The displacement, terror, and erasure hasn’t ended.
One year ago exactly, in May 2021, Israel started bombing Gaza Strip. Gaza is essentially an open air prison that’s been under illegal Israeli military blockade and control for 15 years, where over a million Palestinian refugees live. The Israeli Defense Forces sent a daily 400+ rockets onto the population, killing over 250 Palestinians and injuring thousands in a matter of days of the operation.
Just last week, on May 11, 2022, Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American giant in journalism, was on assignment with Al Jazeera reporting on Israeli military raids on a refugee camp in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, when she was killed. She was targeted and shot in the head while wearing a helmet and a flak jacket clearly marked with the word “PRESS”. Days later, Israeli soldiers disrupted and attacked her funeral procession by kicking and beating pallbearers and harassing the crowds of Palestinian mourners, allowing them no room to grieve and bury their dead in peace.
These are just two stories that (only barely) made Western news headlines. If it were true — as the media portrays — that there are only incidents every few months, wars only every few years, it would still be too much. But it’s not true: Palestinians face this kind of violence and oppression every single day. When does this end for them?
Palestinians living under illegal Israeli occupation and Palestinians murdered by Israel are denied dignity, support, and justice. Palestinian refugees are missing entirely from the conversation of bringing peace and justice to the land. But without return, there will be no justice. Without justice, there cannot be peace.
I stand with and defend the Palestinians resisting racist colonial settler violence, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid. I stand with Palestinian refugees in their right to life, security, and their return home.
I don’t know how else to do it but to keep making art, to stand by this even though there are consequences for speaking the truth in the face of empire.
I’ll keep learning and asking questions.
I’ll keep elevating Palestinian and allied voices.
I’ll keep wondering what it means to build bridges and crush walls.
I’ll keep considering how to be a part of change for the long haul.
Relationship Matters.
I first traveled to the Middle East in 2015. As I wrote in The pursuit of “why not?”:
When Katie asked if I would go with her to Palestine in the summer of 2015, I didn’t agree because I had a deep, holistic view of the history or politics there. I really only knew what she told me when she visited on her way home, shell-shocked after the 2014 Gaza War. But I was curious, so I said yes. Why not?
I sensed the trip would become more than a pilgrim’s obligation to see the sacred places of a particular faith, which is what takes many to the Holy Land. For two weeks, we worked shoulder to shoulder with a Palestinian family peacefully resisting the violent occupation of their land, with the threat of property confiscation and imminent destruction. We picked apples and plucked wheat and watered trees. We shared stories of hope and violence and reconciliation. We visited a couple holy sites. Over our farm chores, we spoke a lot about place, because it’s the crux of history and people in this context.
When you go to see sacred places and you discover holy stories and real suffering instead, you don’t get to leave unchanged. Since then, my heart has only grown for Palestinians, and notably, Palestinian refugees. As a way to stay connected, raise awareness, and process my own experience, I've made art about my experiences and my hope for peace and for Palestinians.
It was once I returned home from my first trip to Palestine in 2015 that I learned how many Palestinians were forcibly removed from their homes, land, jobs, and lives nearly 75 years ago. How, today, three or four generations of Palestinians live in refugee camps across the Middle East. Many of the 5.6 million Palestinian refugees today registered with UNRWA (the UN refugee relief and works agency serving Palestinians, which predates the establishment of UNHCR) are concentrated in camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Factors like the COVID-19 pandemic, lack of citizenship and rights in host countries, and man-made disasters like the 2020 Beirut Blast have further devastated already-vulnerable refugees in volatile countries like war-torn Syria and economically-collapsed Lebanon, so the work of non-profits and individuals that work in ways fill the gaps is more critical than ever.
Newly arrived to Denver in 2018, I weeded through the advocacy and peacemaking groups to find a place to invest and commit. Eventually I was encouraged to meet Suzann Mollner, executive director of Beirut and Beyond, who was known and respected for giving her life to serve Palestinian refugees. As I searched for meaningful, long-term ways to contribute to the fight to affirm dignity and bring hope to some of the world’s most vulnerable, I discovered that partnering with Beirut and Beyond was it.
The work of Beirut and Beyond is grounded in sincere love and commitment to human flourishing. Their work focuses on relationship, relief, and reconciliation in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan. They foster awareness of the complications and intricacies of the Middle East, and encourage others to be peacemakers. They accomplish this by completing projects benefiting the needs of Palestinian refugee communities run by national organizations on the ground in several countries.
I volunteered for Beirut and Beyond by photographing events and providing graphic design for fundraising campaigns for a while, and then I joined Suzann in Amman, Jordan, and Beirut, Lebanon, for three weeks in August 2019 as a volunteer storyteller.
Now, still armed with my camera and pen, I design, write, make photographs, raise money, call on my legislators to act, talk to anyone who will listen. Whatever helps; the needs are multi-faceted. I jump in where I’m useful with my skills and my time again and again to benefit the work to bring hope to Palestinians.
From people I've met, in camps I’ve entered into, for projects that have and will come to life: my own heart has been broken open and reshaped for Palestinian refugees, and Beirut and Beyond’s partners facing increasingly overwhelming and challenging conditions.
The following three images on my Etsy Shop (open only through the end of May!) celebrate, elevate, and support Beirut and Beyond’s efforts benefitting Palestinian refugees, my solidarity with the greater Palestinian struggle, and my joy to make work that propels hope and change. Read on to learn about the photos, and please consider purchasing one to support Beirut and Beyond, and also my sabbatical in the fall.
“The Paths We Take”
📍Bethlehem, Palestine, 2015
This image was captured on a hot summer day in Bethlehem, Palestine. I snapped a shot of Amber’s feet while she stood on the stairs. But these were no ordinary stairs. They were bright, an explosion of color in a sea of tan stone. The steps were hopeful and obnoxious in all the right ways.
And these were no ordinary feet. They weren't mine, but they belonged to someone who'd traveled where I'd traveled, ran away from and into the same hard places I'd been.
They were caked in the same dirt as mine from exhausting farm labor at Tent of Nations in the sweltering sun where showers weren't available because access to water was cut off, a form of collective punishment often used on Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank. These feet had walked the same rows of fruit and nut trees I had, in hopes that the Palestinian farmers who planted them could stay on the land and be around to see them mature and bear fruit.
They’d walked into the same hard conversations about the realities Palestinians endure under occupation, and our complicity and privilege within that context.
A brutal attack and shooting at Damascus Gate.
Humble church services in the Old City.
Healing songs in caves and around camp fires.
Refusing to be enemies.
Back home with more questions than answers.
Feet carry us into stories and out of them. They measure where we've been; they keep records of our journeys for us. The stories we tell can be written from our soles advancing into the places unknown, and our lives written from our souls going into parts unknown.
This is one of my favorite photos I've ever taken. Not because of the way it looks, but the way it talks. I love how it speaks about the unexpected paths we take.
This print is for sale through May. Get one while you can. 20% of the profit of sales of “The Paths We Take” will go to Beirut and Beyond, to support their work with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan.
“Manger Square”
📍Bethlehem, Palestine, 2015
The city of Bethlehem, Palestine is a city divided, but not in the city square. Across Manger Square from the Nativity Church stands this Mosque of Omar.
Upon entering the Nativity Church for the first time, I was concerned primarily with seeing the site where Jesus was born into a lousy cave to young, brown, refugee parents. You wouldn't know Jesus by seeing this place. I don't think the shrines and altars, ornate and lavish, would have been his style.
On the way out, I took notice of the low door. You have to hunch over to enter into the building. It was built as a tiny entrance to keep people from riding their horses or driving their carts into the church. The door has remained small, now called Door of Humility, where one must bow to enter.
Out through the door, the light pierced my eyes and the call to prayer from the mosque reverberated off stones all around, and I bowed. I bowed not toward the manger or the mosque but to step into the square that represents a coexistence of Muslim and Christian faiths. A city that represents light in the darkness. A compassion that reaches across borders and languages and conflicts and cultures and fights for FREEDOM for everyone. I bowed back into a world where faith now lives in people, and not stone buildings, and certainly not in concrete walls.
In an iconic photo of the Berlin Wall, the word 'FREEDOM' was painted beneath the swinging legs of hopeful Berliners as they waited atop The Wall for the time to break down decades of division.
May we dream of a Bethlehem liberated the way Berlin was on November 9, 1989.
Hope asks me to dream of a future where walls come down and frees those living in the shadows of walls we construct with our biases and fears. Where we leave fragments behind, after the dismantling as a reminder. Like the Berlin Wall. Hope rushes in to DMZs and Dead Zones and buffer zones and crushes what we build out of fear and dismantles it stone by stone, topples it like a line of dominoes.
So we can all be free.
_____
This image was inspired by my travels to Palestine in 2015 at a time when I was processing that experience and my place in working toward building that better world with Palestinians. It’s from a series I titled Crushing Walls, a set of digital photographs shot in 2019 of live tabletop miniature sets.
The image is a miniature set of the Manger Square (Omar Mosque in Bethlehem), with a wall reading ‘FREEDOM’ built in front of the scene. The first header image of this post (“Flower Thrower”) is in the same Crushing Walls photo series, and features street art by the inimitable Banksy in Beit Sahour, Palestine.
With this series, I wanted to offer us ways to explore and reflect on themes of freedom, reconciliation, and hope. I wanted to start conversations, rather than end them. I created the Crushing Walls photo series in this spirit.
See behind the scenes for a peek at my creation process for Crushing Walls:
20% of the profit of sales of any Crushing Walls print will go to Beirut and Beyond, to support their work with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan.
“Light”
📍Shatila Refugee Camp, Beirut, Lebanon, 2019
This image is a symbol of light and hope coincidentally captured on my second trip to the Middle East, in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.
You can hear stories and see pictures from the camps and never grasp the magnitude of life in them. I still can’t, because I got to wander home and leave. But it did sink in to me and never left.
I’d spent hours wandering through the alleys and cramped streets of Shatila Camp in Beirut with Suzann and Em Ahmed. We walked far into the heart of the camp so I could see it for the first time and work to capture images of the realities.
Toward the end of our tour we found ourselves in an alley similar to others I’d wandered: dark and damp (Beirut is humid as hell), littered with trash (there aren’t trash services in the camps), live electrical wires strung up overhead bundled next to water lines (infrastructure is lacking — this was supposed to be a “temporary” camp established in 1949.) I was still looking for signs of life from inside, but I was becoming overwhelmed with the desperation and injustices I was witnessing. I tried to put my own sensitivities aside as I kept following and looking. Yallah.
Allow me to center my experience for a moment more: I don’t remember discovering the feather or even taking this photograph. It was serendipitous and intuitive, I suppose. A gift of my subconscious, who’d taken the wheel after I had exhausted myself shooting hundreds (maybe thousands) of photographs before that moment. It was my first time in an urban camp like this and it was a shocking, overstimulating environment for me. I still got the work done, still tread respectfully and lightly. Still did my best to capture it thoroughly without making anyone feel uncomfortable or objectified as I was still learning how to capture photos that didn't diminish the dignity of those who lived there, who called it home.
I discovered the image when I was dumping media onto my laptop later that evening at a hookah-smoky cafe just off Hamra street in Beirut, recovering from the tough day of work and exposure in the camp with a glass of Lebanese white wine and a greasy musakhan chicken wrap. When I saw it, it took my breath away. Wallah. Deep in the bowels of the camp in this alley, I looked up and saw a feather on a wire. I captured it, even though I can’t recall it.
It was an image I needed to find me, my own art instructing me on looking for light in dark places, even when I didn’t know how to see it yet. I think it’s one of the most significant images I’ve captured to date because it is a powerful symbol of resolve to keep showing up, to grow in capacity and knowledge, to speak up and help in the ways wherever effective, to wholeheartedly commit to staying relational and connected amidst the continuous pain and trauma of the ongoing Nakba.
I hope that’s a symbol you can relate to. There’s always hope and light to be found, if we’re willing to have the eyes for it.
20% of the profit of sales of “Light” will go to Beirut and Beyond, to support their important work with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan.
Thanks to those of you who’ve purchased art and supported my sabbatical. And thanks for the ways you’ve shown up for me as I work in solidarity for Palestinians and Palestinian refugees. The work to stand in solidarity and speak up with Palestinians has never been more important. It means the world to me to have your support as I continue to try to make a living and make an impact with my work.
Grateful,
Bloom Where You’re Planted
On a much lighter note, I just introduced this cute “Bloom Where You’re Planted” print that I designed. I’m offering it in exchange for a smaller contribution to my sabbatical. I can send you one if you want to send $15 or more to me via Venmo! I know not everyone can afford what I am offering on Etsy, but this is an easy way to be a part of my fundraising support for my fall sabbatical. Here’s my link:
