The way we are resisting is by telling our stories.
–Jawad Siyam, Madaa Creative
Center
Art Forces 2021-2024
I Witness Silwan, Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project
MISSION
Art Forces’ mission is to create community public-art and media to better understand humanity, organize for equality and justice and to resist militarism, environmental and racial injustice and colonialism.
Goals include:
Making visible hidden histories
Entrepreneurial development especially for women and youth
Interrogate systems of knowledge and power
Produce easily accessible knowledge in multimedia formats
Youth development
DESCRIPTION
Founded in 2001, Art Forces works in partnership with grassroots organizations in locations that include: urban areas in the USA, and villages and refugee camps in Occupied Palestine’s West Bank and Gaza and Lebanon. Colonization, in particular of Palestine, is a crucial lens through which Art Forces responds to 21st century issues.
Art Forces' work is framed by World Systems Theory, an approach to global history and social change that suggests a world economic system in which some countries reap benefits in the exploitation of others.
Art Forces amplifies and activates site-specific murals to engage local and global audiences via websites, public events, multimedia platforms, GPS Apps and social media. The aim is to harness the energy generated in the creation of the site-specific projects to build relationships and organize for social change action.
THANK YOU TO OUR FUNDERS including
Sam Mazza Foundation
Handleman Family Fund
McMillan Stewart Foundation
Middle East Children’s Alliance
I Witness Silwan is a project in partnership with Madaa Creative Center, Silwan, Occupied Jerusalem
Madaa Creative Center Mission
Build a safe, creative, and human rights-oriented space for the community, by engaging with children, youth, women, and men through activities and projects that empower them.
Strategic Objectives
–To contribute to the steadfastness of the Jerusalemite community.
–Empowerment of Jerusalemite women.
–Creating a secure environment for children.
We want to keep our children away from the violence, keep them from being arrested [by Israeli police]. We want to give them back a little bit of their childhood.
–Zuheir Rajabi, Director Madaa Creative Center, Batn al Hawa Branch, Silwan, East Jerusalem
I WITNESS SILWAN
Public Art, Tourism, and International Solidarity in Occupied East Jerusalem
Madaa-Silwan Creative Center & US-based Art Forces
I Witness Silwan is an international public art project in support of Silwan’s fight against dispossession. Murals depicting the eyes of local and international leaders, activists, workers, and more, are scattered across the hills of Silwan, East Jerusalem and can be seen from miles away.
Detail, I Witness Silwan
Batn al-Hawa, Silwan, Occupied East Jerusalem
Jerusalem JerusalemJeee
Eyes Murals–Visible across the city.
Eyes of Community Member
Eyes of Ghassan Kanafani, writer, assassinated 1973.
Eyes of Um Nasser, resident fighting dispossession
The staring eyes say to people that we see them and they should see us too…we want to say that we are here — we love our land and our home. –Jawad Siyam
Dispossession by religious settler “non-profits” such as Ateret Cohanim, threaten 750 to 800 people living in 15 buildings in Batn al-Hawa.These settler “non-profits” aim to dispossess all of Silwan’s Palestinian residents.
Hillside Batn al-Hawa
Eyes of Nizar Shweiki, Freedom Fighter
Eyes of Mohummad Fatafta, Freedom Fighter
Eyes of Community Member Freedom Fighter
Palestine Flower
Eyes of Hamad Moussa, Farmer
Image by John Halaka, Palestinian American artist.
Eyes of Che Guevara
Eyes of George Perry Floyd, Killed by police in USA
Eyes of Iyad el Halak, Killed by occupation forces in 2019.
Eyes of Bai Bibiyon, Lumad leader & organizer woman-chieftainin thePhilippines.
Image: Cece Carpio
Hillside Batn al-Hawa
Eyes of Alex Nieto
Killed in cold blood by San Francisco police in 2014. Image: Josué Rojas.
Eyes of Rachel Corrie, American activist killed by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza, 2003.
Eyes of John Berger, critic and writer.
Image: Dennis Sullivan
Photo: Kobi Wolfe
Eyes of Malcom X by Emory Douglas
Eyes of Milad Ayyash by Sliman Mansour Killed at age 15 by settlers in Batn al Hawa.
Eyes of Ishaq Maragha, martyred 1983, Image by Jos Sances.
Edward Said, in Freud and the Non-European (2003), elaborates a vision of identity that is never whole or fixed, but contains foreign elements at its core. Said writes, “The complex layers of the past . . . have been eliminated by Israel.”
Batn
Neighborhood Murals–Local Visibility
Victory – mural on Rajabi home
Chris Ghazaleh with I Witness Team
Photos: Afif Amireh
Local youth, Amir and Sara.
The Rajabi family has been fighting dispossession and its vissiccitudes for a decade.
Palestine Flower Eyes
Free Bird
Um Nasser’s House
Um Nasser and her family have been fighting displacement for 10 years.
Designed and painted with Um Nasser and family
Your Imagination is Limitless, and Your Mind is the Most Powerful Tool
Mural on kindergarten
Designed and painted by Chris Ghazala
Photo Afif Amireh
Wadi Hilweh, Silwan, Occupied East Jerusalem
–on street leading to Madda Creative Center
Gifts From the Sun
In 1994, total control over Silwan was given to "non-profits" and Israel Nature and Parks Authority. They use ‘heritage tourism to create a different political reality in Silwan’ and renamed Silwan "City of David", a bible themed tourist site with over one million visitors a year.
Designed & painted by Chris Gazala with I Witness Team & Community
The goal of the ”non-profits”, with full backing of the state of Israel, is to dispossess all Palestinians in Silwan and install Jewish settlers. Hundreds of Palestinians have already been dispossessed.
Designed and painted with Women of Wadi Hilweh
Ain al Loza, Silwan, Occupied East Jerusalem
Seeds Of Love
May 2022, the Rajabi home was demolished. 35 people were dispossessed, and a clinic.
“This earth, if it were in my hands, if I were able to flip this world, if I possessed the power to saturate this world, with seeds of love, so all the world is filled with trees of love, so love becomes the world, so loved becomes the way” –Fadwa Tuqan
"I choose journalism to be close to people, it may not be easy to change the reality but at least I was able to make that voice heard by the world" –Shireen Abu Akleh
"My
homeland is not a suitcase, and I am no traveler” Diary of a Palestinian Wound, Mahmoud Darwish.
L
–R: Mahmoud Darwish, Fadwa Tuqan, Ghassan Kanafani, Nizar Banat, Naji al Ali, Shireen Abu Akleh
Social Media and Outreach
www.iwitnesssilwan.org @iwitness_Silwan
I Witness Silwan produces unique materials for social media, merchandise and informational documents to be displayed in Jerusalem and the US. Our social media presence has increased significantly in the past year. Goals include
• Building relationships with the Palestine solidarity community internationally.
• Raise the profile of I Witness Silwan
• Inform people, especially in the USA the displacement people of Silwan are contending with
• Illustrate how art plays many roles including in resistance and resilience
Video Production
I Witness Silwan produces short videos, 5-20 minutes in length, feature documentary in progress.
We Are One Body–From Jerusalem to Gaza, Gazan artist collaborates with I Witness Silwan
https://vimeo.com/981956722
https://vimeo.com/638090415
I Witness Silwan–Art and Resistance in Occupied Jerusalem
https://vimeo.com/881287786
https://vimeo.com/811486646
I Witness Silwan Core Team
Among the many families facing eviction notices in East Jerusalem, Um Nasser A Rajabi, who lives in Silwan's Batin Al Hawa neighborhood, is one of the closest to me. I remember her bringing me a cup of tea and sitting next to me with tears in her eyes. I could see both sadness and strength as she talked about the recent clash near her house, her fear of tear gas being thrown at the children. She discussed how the murals made her feel reassured and safe. These invaluable and never-ending words of support from Um Nasser and all those around us show the steadfast desire of my people to live a peaceful, normal life.
–Manar Shereateh
For me, "I Witness Silwan" is a project of support, steadfastness, challenge, resistance, and delivering a message to the occupier. Sometimes we are there to draw and witness the attacks of the occupation army on the people and even on us while we are drawing.
–Jenan Maswadeh
I Witness Silwan is an act of visual decolonization, looking the “colonial gaze” in the eye, generating a global gaze. I Witness Silwan claims the right to look (Derrida) bearing witness to colonial violence and dispossession, and steadfast resistance, and encouraging solidarity.
–Susan Greene, Director Art Forces,
I Witness Silwan
I think this project will make people understand more of what is happening –whether people come to Silwan and see everything up close or see everything from a distance. We want everyone to know that we love life and want to live in peace –we want a flourishing life in our homes and neighborhood –and that our only wish is not to be deported from our homes.
–Zuhier Rajabi, head of Residents Council and Madaa Creative Center, Batn al-Hawa branch.
As a Palestinian American I learned so much more about my people’s struggle for self determination and justice in I Witness Silwan’s mural camp. The people of Silwan were part of the project every step of the way. The occupation is their daily struggle and I witnessed what art can do. I witnessed the hope that comes along with creating a narrative seldom represented and lifted up in a world which suppresses the voices of the oppressed.
–Chris Ghazala, 2022
Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project, Olympia WA
The Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project (ORSMP) began in 2006 to honor the life and aspirations of Rachel Corrie through action and organizing for a better world. Rachel was from Olympia and was murdered in Gaza in 2003 when she was run over by an Israeli driven bulldozer that was attempting to demolish the home of a Palestinian pharmacist.
Located at the corner of State and Capital in Olympia WA, this4,000 sq.ft. interdisciplinary mural moves from the local to the global and was made possible by the collective effort of more than 200 groups and individuals from around the world. ORSMP is produced with The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice.
In October 2022, The Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project launched a new exhibition space. The inaugural show intersected with the publication of a new series of self-guided virtual walking tours of downtown Olympia, titled Olympia’s Hidden Histories. The gallery will showcase collaborative and local art connecting to the themes of history and connection found in the tours and the mural.
Walls Tell Stories–Olympia, New Interactive Map of Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural – History is a creative act.
Explore the mural with our new interactive map, where you can hear from the makers of each of the mural’s images– how, why and what their image represents and expresses.
https://bit.ly/3LRtbDn
Special thanks to GISCorp for their support!
Peacemaker Gallery
“
OLYMPIA’S HIDDEN HISTORIES” WALKING TOURS
"Olympia's Hidden Histories" is a series of self-guided multimedia walking tours that seek to make visible the stories of Olympia's diverse communities and natural ecology. Students at The Evergreen State College produced four StoryMaps tours on the historic displacement of Indigenous (Squaxin Island Tribe), Chinese, and working-class communities from downtown, and the salmon and oysters from the Deschutes Estuary, and contemporary efforts for cultural revitalization and ecological restoration:
• stəčas (Steh-Chass): People of the Water
• Tidelands: “When the Tide is Out, the Table is Set”
• Olympia's Chinatowns: Exclusion and Endurance
• The 5th Avenue Dam: Reflections on Capitol Lake
“Olympia’ s Hidden Histories” is a collaboration of Evergreen students and faculty with the “Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural” and “Walls Tell Stories, Olympia” projects of Art Forces and the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice. The web-based ArcGIS StoryMaps tours can be viewed on any device. Even for long-time Olympia residents, the tours can open new windows to familiar places
Olympia s Hidden Histories: artforces.org/hiddenhistories
No app download needed to access the tours collection via the link or QR Code. Support from Humanities Washington, National Endowment for the Humanities, Thurston County Heritage Grant, American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, Handleman Family Fund, Sam Mazza Foundation, Middle East Children's Alliance, and Mellon Foundation (via The Evergreen State College Dean's Office)
SUMUD – Resistance Until Liberation
Mural and Community Space, Oakland CA/ Lisjan (Ohlone) Land
With Artists Against Imprisonment, and a collaboration with 35 activist organizations and artists in the Bay Area, Palestine and Lebanon. The project explores the deep interconnections between our struggles and the brutal systems of imprisonment in the U.S. and Palestine. The mural will serve as a demonstration of the Palestinian Liberation Movement’s vibrancy and a memorialization of this moment. It will give us the chance to deepen relationships, reflection, assessments, and growth to empower our community after 11 months of genocide with a regional war looming. We aim for the project to contribute to the tools and the knowledge we need to sustain us for the long term.
