Art Forces 2024

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 in resistance to militarism, environmental injustice and colonialism.

Goals include:

Making visible forgotten histories

Interrogate systems of knowledge and power

Produce knowledge

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

Middle East Children’s Alliance

Batn al-Hawa, Silwan, Occupied East Jerusalem

Photo: Afif Amireh

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

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

Eyes of Community Member

Eyes of Ghassan Kanafani, writer, assassinated 1973.

Eyes of Um Nasser, resident fighting dispossession

Hillside Batn al-Hawa

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.

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-chieftain in the Philippines.

Image: Cece Carpio Hillside Batn al-Hawa

Eyes of Rachel Corrie, American activist killed by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza, 2003.

Eyes of John Berger critic and writer.

Alex Nieto American citizen killed by San Francisco police in 2014.

Image: Josué Rojas.

Image: Dennis Sullivan Photo: Kobi Wolfe

Eyes of Malcom X by Emery Douglas

Eyes of Milad Ayyash by Sliman Mansour Killed at age 15 by settlers in Batn al Hawa.

Eyes

Sigmund Freud, the Austrian-Jewish founder of psychoanalysis, grappled with the origins of Jewish identity in his last work, Moses, and Monotheism (1939). Edward Said, in his last work, 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.”

of Ishaq Maragha, martyred 1983, Image by Jos Sances.

Batn al Hawa, Silwan, Occupied East Jerusalem

Neighborhood Murals–Local visibility

Victory – mural on Rajabi home

Chris Ghazaleh with I Witness Team

Photos: Afif Amireh

The Rajabi family has been fighting dispossession and its vissiccitudes for a decade.

Local youth, Amir and Sara.

Palestine Flower Eyes

Free Bird

Um Nasser and her family have been fighting displacement for 10 years.

Designed and painted with Um Nasser and family Phots Afif Amireh, Jenan Maswadeh

Mural on kindergarten

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

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.

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 neverending 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 Master Muralist

Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project

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, this 4,000 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.

Peacemaker Gallery

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!