Looking at the Masters: Sliman Mansour

Sliman Mansour was born in 1947 in Birzeit, a small village north of Ramallah. He is an internationally recognized Palestinian artist. He studied art at Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem from 1967 until 1970. Mansour believes in sumud, Palestinian ideology that values steadfastness and perseverance.  Sumud for Palestinians comes from their long history of rootedness in their land and their culture.  The concept emerged as a result of the Six-Day War in June 1967, when the coalition of Arab states Egypt, Syria, and Jordan lost the Golan Heights and the Jordanian West Bank to Israel. As a result, 325,000 Palestinians and 100,000 Syrians were expelled or fled from the West Bank. Mansour’s oil paintings demonstrate his love of his homeland and the beauty, resilience, and hopes of the Palestinian people.

The Daughter of Jerusalem (1978)

Mansour developed a set of cultural and historical symbols to depict Palestinian identity. In “The Daughter of Jerusalem” (1978) (28”x21”) (oil) a young Palestinian woman, wearing a dress with traditional Palestinian embroidery, stands in a barren desert that represents the land to which Palestinians are tied, but no longer theirs. She stands silent and still, but tall. On her head, in the shape of an open eye, is a picture of the city of Jerusalem. The gold dome of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third most holy structure in Islam, is placed at the center of the eye. Also known as the Dome of the Rock, the mosque is located on Temple Mount, also sacred to Jews and Christians. The eye shape refers to the Arab saying that a loved one is the pupil of one’s eye. 

Yaffa (1979)

In “Yaffa” (1979) (22”x19”) (print) a beautiful woman in a traditional Palestinian dress carries a large basket of oranges. Other women are picking oranges from the abundant trees. Orange trees, another symbol of Palestinian loss, are depicted frequently in Mansour’s paintings. Yaffa was a prosperous commercial port in Palestine, but it became a part of Israel in 1948 when Israel officially became a state on May 14, 1948. Mansour remembers the fields of oranges, and he wants viewers to see Palestinians as beautiful, peaceful people in a prosperous land. 

I Ismael (1997)

Mansour recalls in an interview in the 1980’s, “They gave us rules like that we should not paint in certain colors. That we should not paint in red, green, black, and white. This rule was published in newspapers and everywhere, including in Israel.” The Palestinian flag contains four colors. The New Visions movement (1987-1993) was the Palestinian artists’ response to the first Intifada. They boycotted Israeli art supplies, looking instead for natural dyes such as coffee, henna, and clay to create their work. “I Ismael” (1997) (79”x32”) (mud & acrylic) was Mansour’s response: “The mud came from my childhood memories. As a child, I used to work with my grandmother when she was building beehives and even ovens with mud. And I was always around her, trying to help. So, when I thought about material that I could use, mud was the first thing that came to my mind. After a while, once I started making figures, I realized that the mud also reflects the human fate with the cracks, people waiting to disappear, fall down and go away.”

“I Ismael” consists of six male figures created from mud. The title of the work refers to the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar taken from Genesis thought to be unable to bear children, Abraham’s elderly wife Sarah gave her young maidservant Hagar to her husband as a concubine. Hagar bore him a son Ismael.  As Abraham’s firstborn, he had the right of inheritance. Unexpectedly, Sarah gave birth to Isaac a few years later. To keep Ismael from his inheritance, Sarah convinced Abraham to exile Hagar and Ismael from their homeland, as Palestinians were from theirs.  

 In a 2002 exhibition, Mansour added “Garden of Hope” (2002), a bed of dry clay at the base of “I Ismael.” He painted on the surface large red flowers with green leaves

Memory of Places (2009)

In “Memory of Places” (2009) (54”x46”) (oil) Mansour depicts an elderly Palestinian man standing in front of a Birzeit landscape. Stone terraces are filled with olive trees, Palestinians’ main income source. Olive trees, with gnarled trunks and silvery green leaves, cover the hills. Mansour depicts a land full of life, but it is now only a memory of the past.  The fields are run down and filled with weeds, since the Palestinians were prohibited from bringing in machinery to maintain the olive groves. 

Camel of Heavy Burden II (2005)

“Jamal Al-Mahlal” (Camel of Heavy Burdens) is one of Mansour’s most famous paintings. He made the original oil painting in1973. It also is known as the “Palestinian Porter.” The old Palestinian man carries a large pack on his back. The pack is in the shape of an eye, and the city of Jerusalem is depicted on it. He walks in a barren landscape. The pack is a heavy burden, and he bends under its weight. Palestinians carry this priceless memory of Jerusalem with them. The original painting was a gift to Muammar Gaddafi from the Libyan ambassador in London. The painting was destroyed in American air strikes in Libya in 1986. The first posters of the image were made in 1975.

Mansour, having lost the original painting, repainted it with the name “Camel of Heavy Burden” in 2005. He added the image of the Christian Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The painting became an icon, and posters, cards, stickers, and T-shirts carried the image. 

Mansour has promoted Palestinian art since 1973, when he co-founded the League of Palestinian Artists. A lecturer and teacher, he co-founded the al-Wasiti Art Center in East Jerusalem in 1994. His work has been exhibited in several Arab countries, and in Paris, New York, Norway, and Asia. He was awarded in 1988 the Grand Nile Prize in the Seventh Cairo Biennial as well as the Palestine Prize for the Visual Arts. In 2019 he received the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture. He co-authored the book Both Sides of Peace: Israeli and Palestinian Political Poster Art, published in 1998 by the University of Washington Press. 

Mansour works for peace and equality, and he supports a two-state solution. In a 2014 interview, he said, “I hope, I hope. I would love to have my art make a change in the world about Palestinians, because they want to dehumanize Palestinians, I hope and I think my art helps a little bit in changing the idea.”