“Boullata takes the reader close to the struggle of those visionary, obstinate Palestinian artists who create so that their anonymous heroic land with its ancestral olive trees may survive.”—John Berger
“It is rare and exciting to find an art book full of persuasive, urgent visual imagery whose language and strategies are ultimately unfamiliar, whatever their surface appearance, to the complacent western eye. And it is refreshing to sense that the pull of much of the work derives from and points back to Palestinian culture itself, rather than being necessarily part of the self-conscious east-west discourse which so preoccupied Edward Said. As such it represents another advance in international understanding of Palestinian history and aspiration, but determinedly through the artist's eye.”—Guardian UK
This diverse selection features pre-1948 paintings alongside contemporary media works, highlighting the political concerns of Palestinian artists and their unique contributions to modern Arab culture. Works by artists who live in Palestine are examined alongside those of artists from the Palestinian diaspora.
Kamal Boullata is a painter and writer. His writings on Palestinian art have appeared in numerous art and academic periodicals, and he recently edited Belonging and Globalisation: Critical Essays on Contemporary Art and Culture (Saqi Books).

Palestinian Art: From 1850 to the Present

Arts & Photography

Boullata, Kamal

History & Criticism

Saqi Books

Women of the Fertile Crescent: An anthology of modern poetry by Arab women

Three Continents Press

Faithful Witnesses: Palestinian Children Recreate Their World (English, French and Arabic Edition)

Olive Branch Press

Between Exits is the fist monograph to trace the evolution of Palestinian artist Hani Zurob, from his initial paintings produced in Palestine, through to his most recent works, developed during the artist’s exile in France. The volume is organized chronologically to offer the reader a comprehensive insight into Zurob’s key paintings and series of the past two decades. Writer and curator Kamal Boullata takes the reader through Zurob’s artistic development and carefully reveals how each body of work reflects the evolving approaches to the understanding of self as well as strategies of collective belonging, which the artist’s work constantly addresses. The conflicted Palestinian identity is recurrently mediated and questioned throughout Zurob’s work. Between Exits simultaneously evokes the notion of movement and displacement that are central to the Palestinian everyday reality.

Between Exits: Paintings by Hani Zurob

Black Dog Press

Since the early 1990s, Steve Sabella (born 1975) has consistently been creating cycles of work that comment on each other: Jerusalem in Exile (2006), Exit (2007), In Exile (2008), In Transition (2010), Euphoria (2010), Beyond Euphoria (2012), Metamorphosis (2012) and Independence (2013) comprise a significant tableau of possible transitions and processes of dissolution between world and image, image and world. The book reads time and history out of the photographs and thus describes the genesis of Sabella's photographic oeuvre under the aspects of exile, identity, migration and the divided topologies of the 21st century. Sabella uses photography as the artistic language of existential exile. His relationship to the medium is powerful. "At the end which me am I in us?" asks the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. In this sense, Sabella researches the construction of identity.

Steve Sabella: Works 1997-2013

Photography & Video

Hatje Cantz

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Books by Boullata, Kamal