Context matters: Part two.
Resilience, Crushing Walls, and other art origins
Welcome to Wandering Home, I’m so glad you’re here again!
You’ve heard by now that I recently relaunched my Etsy Shop called ShelbyMathisStudios that I’m keeping open only through May 12. It’s a shop of my photography that I’m using to fund a volunteer trip to the Middle East with Beirut and Beyond this June.
If you want to catch up on my trip, you can read more about my work and travels here:
Middle East trip: Summer 2023. (why now, why Jordan and Lebanon, and why me?)
Art can be a real weapon: how to use it for good. (my philosophy of art as a tool, language, and resistance.)
Peacemaking & Palestinian refugees (why I care, and why I volunteer with Beirut and Beyond.)
I want to share a couple more images from my Etsy shop along with how or why I made them because, as I said in my last post, the backstory of pieces are as much a part of the work as any of the materials I use to produce it. Here’s Part One if you missed it.
I do this 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.
The following images on my Etsy Shop (open only through May 12!) 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 origins of these photos, and please consider purchasing one to support me, Beirut and Beyond, and Palestinian refugees.
Let’s wander again back to the Middle East. You coming?
“Resilience”
📍Saida, Lebanon, 2019.
We'd taken the bus from Beirut to Saida, halfway down the coast of Lebanon. We were visiting the Joint Christian Committee Education Center where refugee students in high school would be receiving the results of their placement exams to learn if they'd progress to the next level.
This organization provides educational services to refugees from Palestine and Syria, giving them access to state-approved curriculum and providing exam prep and even the long, complicated journey to Damascus, Syria, from Saida, Lebanon, where these students can sit for the exam that allows them to test out of their grade levels into the next. This is an incredible, necessary opportunity for Palestinian refugees who have limited access to local schooling in Arabic that provides viable pathways to higher education in the future. JCC’s partnership with Beirut and Beyond makes this possible.
I was tasked with photographing the private ceremony, running around capturing each student — two dozen girls and just a few boys — receiving their certificates and applause from their fellow students and teacher. The girls beamed proud of their accomplishments while the younger boys looked bashful, I’d like to think from the thrill of being surrounded by such smart young women.
After the excitement of the mini-graduation died down, I was invited to have a seat at a school desk just outside where I was served tea by a staff member. Tea with everything here, even your grades. I kicked my feet out to relax for a moment. Other than the bus ride, I hadn't sat all day. A gentleman from the school came round the corner, asked if I liked my tea. Sah, it was good.
"And do you like our plant?" He asked next, pointing to a lone branch growing out of the cement on the side of the classroom. It was a healthy, green shoot with waxy leaves and the hook of a "j" at its base where it shot out of the foundation. I was tired, but I got up and took the photo he seemed to desire. I’ve learned to listen up when someone wants to show me a detail of their life.
I squat down to take one shot. The center director, Abu Hussein, and executive director of Beirut and Beyond, Suzann, were chatting in the background, out of focus. The off-center branch, in focus, was balanced the pair. It’s an understated image that became the one of my favorite images of the trip.
"That plant is like Palestinians," he said. "We are resilient. We can thrive anywhere."
This education center, proof. These students, many originally Palestinian refugees, but some even re-displaced during the war in Syria, where conflict forced them to uproot again more recently.
This partnership with Beirut and Beyond, enabling refugees to participate in education and get these students ready to excel in exams and higher education. This hope for giving them access to the resources to thrive in school so they can thrive in life.
Resilient, oh yes. We’re talking about a people group who has been subjected to far too many things to have to be resilient from.
And still they rise.
And still they thrive.
And still they bloom where they’re planted.
Crushing Walls series.
This set of images 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 a better world with Palestinians. I titled the series “Crushing Walls”. It’s a set of digital photographs shot in 2019 of live tabletop miniature sets.
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.
“Flower Thrower”
📍Setting: Bethlehem, Palestine. Made in 2018.
“Flower Thrower” is the epitome of art as resistance. The background image features street art by the inimitable Banksy in Beit Sahour, Palestine, of a Palestinian man throwing a bouquet of flowers. The foreground is a live handmade wall.
“Hope on a Island”
📍Setting: Terceira Island, Azores, Portugal. Made in 2018.
“Hope on an Island” is a tiny replica of the house where I lived on Terceira Island, the place I called home after my first trip to the Middle East. To me, the flower represents hope in hard places, which I’ve learned a lot about these past eight years I’ve been visiting the Middle East.
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 Israeli occupation that is the source of this so-called “conflict”.
Soon, on May 15, 2023, we will mark the 75th anniversary of The Nakba (The Catastrophe). Nakba Day commemorates the collective mourning of the expulsion of hundreds 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.
As recently as last week, Israel dropped bombs on Gaza Strip. Gaza is essentially an open air prison that’s been under illegal Israeli military blockade and control for 15+ years, where 2 million people live. 1.4 million of them are Palestinian refugees.
Last Spring, on May 11, 2022, Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American giant in journalism, was on assignment with Al Jazeera News 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”. International humanitarian law says it protects Press workers in a conflict. But not here. 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 are continually 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, as my friend Suzann, executive director of Beirut and Beyond, says and does.
Just imagine. What can resistance look like?
Just image, what can hope in hard places look like?
Behind the scenes.
See behind the scenes at my creation process for this series, created in 2018. The wall is made of hand-painted mini dominoes, and the backgrounds are projections of photos I took in 2015 in the Middle East.
I hit a nerve with my process, message, and images, and had the great fortune of being invited to exhibit this body of work in the Confluence Conference at Community College of Aurora, and showcase it in the juried student show, where it won “2nd Best in Show.”
To those who’ve supported my Middle East volunteer trip so far: THANK YOU.
You’ve bought my artwork and book, made a donation, or are providing resources to support me on this journey. Thanks for all of the ways you’ve shown up for me as I work in solidarity for Palestinians and Palestinian refugees. 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.
Please shop ShelbyMathisStudios before May 12 to support my trip to Lebanon and Jordan this June in support of Palestinian refugees.
You can learn more about my trip and artwork by attending an upcoming virtual event with me! Join me soon on Zoom to have a conversation about Palestinian refugees. Beirut and Beyond’s executive director, Suzann Mollner, will present on the history and realities of 75+ years of refugee status. I will share my experience in the Middle East and lots of my photography. We will talk about our upcoming trip to Lebanon and Jordan, the importance of my work with Beirut and Beyond, and how you can become involved!
NEXT SUNDAY, April 30th
1:00pm MDT / 3:00pm EDT
on Zoom (link provided upon registration)
To resilience and crushing walls,
