After a harrowing seven weeks in conflict in the Gaza Strip, affectees attempt to return to normalcy amid a frail ceasefire. But while some remain debilitated by the losses caused by one of the most devastating wars in recent times, others, such as Palestinian sculptor Iyad Sabbah, have channelled their grief in visual art.
Among the rubble in the Shejaiya district, an area that witnessed the extremity of the war, human figurines sculpted by Sabbah stand tall, reported Al-Arabiya News. He made them out of fibre-glass and covered them with clay, expressing through them his perspective of the war.
“I wanted to portray what was missing,” he said, remembering not only those who lost their lives during the war but also those who were forced to flee their homes. “We lived through the war and we lived the events we saw in the media. All of this pushes us into thinking about expressing the scenery we’ve seen,” he added.
The artist felt the rubble of the destroyed buildings could be recreated as a piece of art. “I tried to add to it what was lost after the war… the people,” he shared. “I tried to build the people, but through my own vision, I tried to divert the subject to human consciousness because, at the end of the day, human beings paid the price of the war.”
Sabbah holds that the people who survived the events of the past months were left traumatised by the war and “carried the scars of the war” with them. His statues show men and women holding each other and walking alongside their children as a family. He said his work on the statues was no easy feat as it required both fibre-glass and homemade clay, and Gazan artists often face the problem of material shortage.
“Generally, an artist turns anything he gets his hands on into art… into a piece with value, but we do have a serious crisis with our supplies, especially when it comes to sculpting.” Another challenge he faced was deciding on the location to display his artwork.
The statues first appeared in Shejaiya, but he couldn’t keep it there for too long as it is private property. Sabbah said that his work is a personal expression of the occurrences in Gaza, and that people in the region were touched by the human element of the exhibition, which rippled into a great response from even outside of Gaza. While his work has been lauded by many, some residents have expressed their concern over the statues on religious grounds, terming them ‘haram’.
Born in Saudi Arabia to Palestinian parents, Sabbah returned to Gaza in 1982 where he stayed to witness the First Intifada. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Libya before pursuing his Masters in Cairo’s Helwan University. Sabbah, who is currently doing his PhD at a Tunisian university, stated, “What is said on the news will not come through to a lot of people but art gets to anyone, regardless of nationality or race.”
Published in The Express Tribune, November 14th, 2014.
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