Fernwood / Driving in Palestine التحرّك في فلسطين
April 6, 2023
Driving in Palestine, by acclaimed artist Rehab Nazzal, explores the visible indices of the politics of mobility that she encountered firsthand while traversing the occupied West Bank between 2010 and 2020. This photography book consists of 160 black and white photographs, hand-drawn maps and critical essays in Arabic and English by Palestinian and Canadian scholars and artists, including Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, Mohammed El Kurd, Nyla Matuk, and more.
The photographs were all captured from moving vehicles on the roads of the West Bank. They focus on Israel’s architecture of movement restrictions and surveillance structures that proliferate in the West Bank, including the Apartheid Wall, segregation walls surrounding illegal colonies, gates, fences, watchtowers, roadblocks and military checkpoints among other obstacles to freedom of movement. Find the book here.
New Creatives Exhibit
November 18, 2023
"Five Palestinian emerging artists will be exhibiting in the third round of the "New Creatives" exhibition. Join us this Friday, November 18, 2022 for "The New Creatives" exhibition opening at Al Ma'mal Foundation at 17:30 (free entrance) in the Old City of Jerusalem. The exhibition runs until December 15, 2022. More here.
Fernwood / Advocating for Palestine in Canada
June 1, 2022
I contributed a chapter to this volume on Palestine advocacy. I write about the role of Israeli Apartheid Week in cementing an apartheid & settler-colonialism analysis in the case of Palestine, in building up concrete BDS campaigns, and in creating meaningful connections with other struggles for justice.
“Why is it so difficult to advocate for Palestine in Canada and what can we learn from the movement’s successes? This account of Palestine solidarity activism in Canada grapples with these questions through a wide-ranging exploration of the movement’s different actors, approaches and fields of engagement, along with its connections to different national and transnational struggles against racism, imperialism and colonialism. Led by a coalition of students, labour unions, church groups, left wing activists, progressive presses, human rights organizations, academic associations and Palestinian and Jewish community groups, Palestine solidarity activism is on the rise in Canada and Canadians are more aware of the issues than ever before. Palestine solidarity activists are also under siege as never before.” Purchase the book here.
C Magazine / tensions in Representing the Unity Uprising
Rana Nazzal Hamadeh | Spring 2022
“Images of people suffering have long been a topic of debate. Images of inflicted violence can distance, objectify, condemn, and dehumanize—or they can produce compassion and move masses to action. As cameras have become omnipresent, critics have increasingly questioned the role and effect of images of suffering, but their undeniable importance to change-making produces important tensions. As artists, how can we make work that invokes the value of life? How can we represent violence without replicating the relations of domination depicted? How can we express everything that cannot be recreated: the invisible, banal, physical, and psychological effects of loss, suffering, and violence? And are there moments when we should simply try to show things as they are? These are some of the questions I asked myself in spring 2021 as a popular uprising erupted in Palestine…”
AGYU: Lead Time Fall 2021
Art Gallery of York University | November 11, 2021
AGYU is pleased to announce Rana Nazzal Hamadeh’s participation in Lead Time, our ongoing mentorship program, from November 16 to December 14, 2021. We use this opportunity to continue to support Nazzal Hamadeh’s critical and political work that explores the colonization of place across time and mediums. She will be mentored by celebrated and poetic artist and film-maker Larissa Sansour. As part of the Lead Timeprogram, Nazzal Hamadeh will also participate in studio visits with curators and artists Amin Alsaden and Taysir Batniji.
Nazzal Hamadeh is an emerging artist whose work and actions address the disproportionate power structures of settler colonial states. She astutely describes the importance of her voice as a Palestinian artist as follows: “those of us facing our own struggles and feeling stripped of agency, we can forget that we are also agents of change who can act in solidarity with other peoples. I think growing that is really important because it not only offers our solidarity with other peoples, it reminds us we are not just victims.” … read more here.
RIC: Artist Talk Recording
Ryerson Image Centre | November 3, 2021
Join Rana Nazzal Hamadeh in conversation with Chandni Desai, assistant professor in the Critical Studies of Equity and Solidarity at the University of Toronto, about the multimedia exhibition 1/1000th of a Dunam, which explores Palestinian assertions of belonging through the site of soil—an epistemic space where land and belonging are imagined. Co-presented with the Documentary Media program, School of Image Arts, Ryerson University. … watch the artist talk here.
Artist Talk announcement
Ryerson Image Centre | October 13, 2021
Presented by the Ryerson Image Centre and the MFA in Documentary Media Program, School of Image Arts, Ryerson University
Online via Zoom
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
1 pm ET
Join artist Rana Nazzal Hamadeh in conversation with Dr. Chandni Desai, Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, about the multimedia exhibition 1/1000th of a Dunam, which explores Palestinian assertions of belonging through the site of soil—an epistemic space where land and belonging are imagined. On view in the RIC’s Student Gallery from September 15 – October 23, 2021. … details here.
AGYU: Community Resource program spring 2020
Art Gallery of York University | May 31, 2021
Palestinian-Canadian artist/activist Rana Nazzal Hamadeh is the next participant in our Community Resource Program.
Nazzal Hamadeh is a recent Documentary Media MFA graduate from the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University. Currently located in Ramallah in the Palestinian West Bank, Nazzal Hamadeh uses community organizing, photography, and filmmaking to consider Indigenous sovereignty, displacement, and abolition. Her documentary Something From There debuted in 2020 at the Toronto Palestine Film Festival and her exhibition 1/1000th of a Dunam is scheduled to open at the Ryerson Image Centre Student Gallery this fall.
The disproportionate power structures of settler colonial states are complex, which Nazzal Hamadeh astutely addresses when she explains:
Part of the outcome of colonization has been that for those of us struggling with our own issues and feeling stripped of agency, we can forget we are also agents who can act in solidarity with other peoples. I think growing that is actually really essential because it not only offers our solidarity with other people, it reminds us we are not just victims of something.
We look forward to nurturing relations with artists such as Rana Nazzal Hamadeh to expand our networks, to educate and to unite artists, audiences, and communities. This program will enable Nazzal Hamadeh to continue her research and community organizing between Canada and Palestine … read more here.
Report from palestine: “A moment of historic opportunity”
Spring Magazine | May 19, 2021
Western media is reporting a renewed “conflict” between Israelis and Palestinians. What’s actually happening, and what have you witnessed?
I think for most of us involved, nothing that is happening today is new. There are a lot of things that have happened in the past week that are unprecedented, but it really feels like this is a historic story. This is an outcome of what’s been happening for the past 70 to 100 years. In many ways, what’s happening is about Jerusalem, and about the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where Palestinians are being forced out of their homes by Israeli settlers supported by the Israeli army and by the Israel courts. But at the same time the very story of what we’re seeing in Sheikh Jarrah is the story that occurred to so many of us in 1948 and in 1967… read more here.
Review: We Didn’t Grow From Nothing
Canadian Art | November 11, 2020
The Toronto Palestine Film Festival's Local Pals Residency films recently screened at the plumb, all exploring kinship, land and the embodiment of memory
On my first day after quarantine, I hopped on a bike to go to the plumb, a new member-funded DIY space that opened in September, to catch the last day of TPFF’s Local Pals Residency film screening. I made my way down a small alley and was greeted by a purple door. In a quirky basement space of hallways and ceiling pipes, I sat on a big black pillow to watch four films by emerging Palestinian filmmakers, made possible through TPFF’s inaugural residency program in partnership with Trinity Square Video and Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto. Leila Almawy’s Rumaan, Serene Husni’s Brown Bread & Apricots, Kalil Haddad’s The Beautiful Room is Empty and Rana Nazzal’s Something from there (all 2020) are explorations of kinship, land and the embodiment of memory. Relying on oral storytelling and family history, the films presented conversations that often felt too intimate, like I wasn’t quite supposed to be listening. Family members speak to each other, speak to their land, share their past: not quite dinner table conversations, not quite fleeting mentions of memories … read more here.
Rana Nazzal, Something from there (film still from exhibition), 2020. 7 min.
Ryerson MFA grad debuts at Toronto Palestine Film Festival
On the Record | September 30, 2020
When Rana Nazzal Hamadeh asked her father what he wanted her to bring back from Palestine, he asked for soil. Fifteen years later, she says he still displays that soil as a centrepiece in his house; as a Palestinian refugee, her father cannot return to Palestine. Since then, many family, friends and other Palestinian refugees have asked her to bring them soil.
“It’s actually very strangely common in the Palestinian diasporic experience to ask for soil,” she says. “I think it epitomizes the land that was lost and the land being the most important thing that was lost.”
Nazzal Hamadeh says she feels she could build her life’s work based on people’s connection to the soil of their homeland. In fact, she’s already started. Nazzal Hamadeh recently graduated from Ryerson’s MFA in documentary media, focusing on exhibition. Her final exhibit, to be shown later this fall at the Ryerson Image Centre, is titled “1/1000th of a Dunam.” It will display the physical soil she’s collected throughout Palestine.… read more here.