Art has the power to represent social issues in different societies. Artists from all around the world have tried to raise the public consciousness through a vast spectrum of arts: such as George Orwell, British novelist, journalist and critic; Jorge Luis Borges, Latin American short story writer, essayist, and poet; Federico Garcia Lorca, Spanish poet and playwright. These artists highlighted contemporary social obstacles, usually characterised by motifs of revolution, by different mediums of art—writing, painting, performances, music. They intertwine the joys of beautiful and entertaining works of art with the intellectual, philosophical, and revolutionary influence which art can offer.
Mona Hatoum and Mahmoud Darwish are two examples of Palestinian artists who had to escape from socio-political violence. Thence, they were forced to stay in exile. Their art works are responses to their own relationship with the violent cultural problems which they encountered.
Mona Hatoum was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and is a video and installation artist. She does not consider herself Lebanese, as her parents were never able to obtain Lebanese citizenship. With the support of her Palestinian family, she pursued her desires to study design at Beirut University College. In 1975, Hatoum travelled to London at the same time as the outbreak of the civil war back in Palestine and so was forced to remain in London in exile. Hatoum continued her field studies of Fine Art at the Byam Shaw School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art. There, she embraced the movements of surrealism and minimalism in order to explore the violence of the world’s conflicts. Her works are associated with concepts of political and individual conditions; she addresses humanist issues of the lack of personal identity and isolation, gender inequality, domestic life, the issue of marriage in Palestine, amongst other political themes.
Geometric figures are often employed by Hatoum and serve to represent the control of social decorum from her society. She also uses domestic furniture and other household objects to help the public assimilate and familiarize themselves with such intriguing exhibitions of abstract concepts. One of her best known works is a birdcage enclosing a ball of human hair. Hatoum constructs a homelike mise-en-scène imprisoned with wire, provoking questions about a person’s confined will. Nevertheless, Hatoum also magnifies the usage of birdcages from a global perspective in the sculpture Hot Spot, a birdcage-like globe. The sphere is contoured by neon red lights, evoking the idea that the entire world is a zone of political conflict and violence.
Similar to Mona Hatoum, Mahmoud Darwish’s family had to fly to Lebanon to escape the violence born from the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Darwish became internationally known and his books have been translated into more than 20 languages. His fame arose from the power of his poetry and the vivid expressions of Arab and Palestinian identity. As a consequence, Darwish decided to explore different locations instead of staying in a specific place of exile, until he finally settled in Paris for a couple of years. The painful experience of exile is certainly one of Darwish’s main inspirations. Even though Darwish did not live in his country, his poetry is a vigorous reflection and representation of social issues in Israel. Apart from the social-political matters, Darwish dominates the use of Arabic language, describing the innermost sentiments of the people through magnificent imagery, fascinating metaphors, musical rhythms, and symbols. Some readers describe his poems as “prophetic”, as he can visualize and verbalise profound political situations in his poetry.
The Prince of Poets Festival allows citizens to collectively read Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry, emphasizing the significance and power of the arts to represent the reality of local obstacles. Darwish is a strong example of a poet in the Eastern hemisphere who was capable of magnifying and highlighting complications of his culture from different locations. Nonetheless, he equalizes the feelings of the people with his own, as he writes, ‘Whenever I search for myself I find the others/ And when I search for them/ I only find my alien self/ So am I the individual-crowd?’ (Mural, 2000).
Both Mona Hatoum and Mahmoud Darwish portray similar characteristics of artists who express their individual chaotic crisis, such as displacement and exile, in order to globalize the sentiments of people who suffer under the power of societies and governments. As Darwish writes, ‘I am not mine/ I am not mine…’ (Mural, 2000), these artists have the voice, and the influence, to create social awareness of a conflictive world through different art forms, both visual and literary.
