In fraught times, exhibition gives Palestinian Canadian artists space for reflection

When artist Ibrahim Abusitta doesn't know how to say what he's feeling — when his thoughts grow too painful, intricate or tiresome to articulate — he paints flowers. And, right now, at the entrance of Toronto's A Space Gallery, visitors will find a quiet picture of yellow flowers painted by the artist. 

The still life is a tribute to a young Palestinian journalist, named Abubaker Abed, who gained widespread attention for a video showing the yellow rose bush that's flourished outside his Gaza home despite the destruction around it. For Abed, Abusitta and many others, the yellow rose has become a sign of hope.

Abusitta's work is currently on display at the downtown gallery alongside the art of Amanda Boulos in a joint exhibition called The Days We Sang. Both Toronto-based artists are Palestinian Canadians whose work reflects on family, history and identity. The show hopes to provide space for contemplation, says artistic director Vicky Moufawad-Paul, at a time when polarized, knee-jerk responses to the war in Gaza abound.

"There's room for poetry and emotion, rather than just the rawest reaction," she says. "The artists are inundated with images, the audience is inundated with images, and painting can offer us a chance to slow down."

On a small panel, Abusitta recreates a family portrait in twilight hues. It shows the artist's father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather, as well as some of his father's siblings. The portrait is bordered by decorative tiles, which depict animals. These reference a Byzantine mosaic floor discovered beneath a Palestinian farmer's orchard in 2022. It is a reminder, the artist says, that "so many people have been here before." 

The composition is framed by the shape of a house — a motif that appears in many of the artist's paintings. Always the same shape, this is the outline of his grandparents' house in Gaza, which they built in 1965. It has been the locus of family activity for generations and it is where everyone would gather anytime Abusitta visited Gaza. In late November, however, the home was levelled by a rocket attack hours before a temporary ceasefire, the artist says. He honours the house here "as a container of memory," which he has begun painting his family's stories back into.

A centrepiece of the exhibition, Harvest Season shows a group of people gathered beneath a ladder at a separation barrier, where just beyond, farmers pluck the fruit from olive trees. "It's almost like a prison break just so they can reach this harvest season," Abusitta says. He pulled the scene in the foreground — the people, the ladder, the barrier — directly from recent news media showing the West Bank on a day when crossings were restricted, he says. 

Alongside these recreations of family photographs and pictures sourced from the news, a third dimension of Abusitta's painting explores a more abstract symbology. This language is reserved for the territory of hopes, fears and fantasies, he says. "It's something that I just think about every day: How do we get out of this? How did we get into this?"

One painting shows the profile of a head resting on the ground, the outline of a many-propellered aircraft hovering in the night sky above. "I'm thinking of what it's like to dream in Gaza," he says, where the buzz of drones is so loud and constant that locals have a word for it: zanana. Another figure that recurs in these works is the dove — a symbol of peace that flies above the land, unrestrained by borders.

In the months after Israel's strikes on Gaza began, Abusitta's life paused. He spent so much time waiting for updates from family, looking at the news and social media, scared he might see his uncle or cousin in a video of the injured bodies being rushed to hospital. The exhibition gave him the nudge he needed to start making art again.  

"I feel like a lot of people believe art can be this political thing — and I don't believe that," he says. "I don't think the art I make would challenge someone who is on the opposite end." 

"At the same time," he continues, "this is something I need to share, even if it's just for myself." 

In the next room, Boulos explores the subject of mourning through painting and sculpture. Much of the work was inspired by the passing of the artist's uncle, who died from COVID here in Canada at a time when families could not observe regular funerary practices. In the context of this show, she sees a pertinent question: "How do we mourn from afar?" 

"I think about Achille Mbembe's Necropolitics," she says, "where he's asking who's valued and who isn't."

A willow tree in front of her apartment has become a personal monument to her uncle. She's interested in how the tree, with its weeping pose, embodies the mood of mourning. In The Neighbour Knows, the artist, who's an RBC Canadian Painting Competition winner, renders the tree in her trademark expressionistic style with marks that drip and swirl like honey. 

The painting Exploring a Mourner's Forest shows two figures with candles approaching a wall of blooms. The artist's uncle was very young when he passed, she says, and it was quite tragic. "He had tons of flowers on his casket."

In an older body of work — with glass jars moulded from dates — Boulos tells the story of how her Palestinian family was "pushed out in 1948 to Lebanon." It is "a family Nakba story," she says. The jars represent the experience of her great-grandmother, who "[left] Palestine in a car while pregnant" and had to smuggle the family's savings across checkpoints in her body, the artist says. The glass vessels hold coins, and one is filled with date syrup, symbolizing nourishment.

Boulos's most recent pieces on display are a number of painted works on cut paper. The artist has found a fruitful exercise in which she repetitively paints a handful of symbols — a foot crushing a moth or the mythical phoenix, for example. She then folds the painting to create a mirrored print, letting the shapes and colours transform in unpredictable ways. 

Among these cut paper paintings, visitors will notice great vines of curly watermelons climbing the gallery walls like beanstalks. The artist was reacting to the proliferation of this particular symbol on social media as well as in protests. "The thing about watermelons," she says, "is that they crawl on the ground when they grow and they can become really massive."

The artist recognizes how important it is to have spaces, like this exhibition, to come together and talk. "Even when we disagree on what's appropriate at this time and what isn't, there's still a common understanding that we should make room for these conversations and try and be with each other, either emotionally or intellectually."

Although the subjects of The Days We Sang may be sensitive and painful, many who've visited have expressed feeling comforted, Boulos says. "I think people just need room."

The Days We Sang is on view through June 29 at A Space Gallery in Toronto.