❝ To Those,

I started writing this text with the thought of to those. And then I wondered to myself who “those” even are anymore.
My entire practice is home. My work is about home. I dream of home. I remember through home. And home is so far right now. It is so far and I feel so ashamed.

I have always known myself to be a result of violent consequences. When I go home, to our Palestine, I watch politics sit, seep and weigh in every single being’s soul, newborn and aging: repetive, constant, unmoving, like a reel of aged film clipping onto sprockets. Steadfast existence, oIen forgoJen as such, becoming a second nature: a quiet dignified routine.

Persistently noticed out of coincidence, need, othering or more honestly: exotification, morbid curiosity and hatred, the overlooked choose a different agency, an unpredictable one. Art and Resistance isn’t something we discuss when we’re home. Every Friday at noon throwing rocks, at every memorial, at every gathering, in every act and action I see the same youth and ancestors, unwavering, standing tall, holding each other and resisting.

I’ve seen you turn your head away. I’ve heard you call it pointless. We’ve noticed it all.

We call it resilience.

So how do you, yourself break this nihilism. How do you remind the world of your existence. How do you want us to show you we’re worth more than the coincidental seconds you’re barely willing to spend looking at us. Instead, you’d rather believe a rhetoric filled with lies, humiliation, the encouragement of ethnic cleansing, racism, genocide and torture, a rhetoric repeated in all impunity. Why do we have to remind you of your humanity. How have you forgotten justice. How are you so quiet.

Cinema, words, art, this text, images, presence are not a tool of active agent it is the action in itself. Engagement may certainly be a demand, and a necessary one, but you should know it is also a simple act of human nurturing, if you’ve forgotten how to see it to be common and simple decency.
From thin roots to growing branches, a thousand leaves and a million more seeds.

Beyond being messengers, the voices of those in Palestine, and amongst all those occupied and oppressed, transcend the simple task of telling one’s story, they are the breadth, the tremor, the life around your senseless routine. They break your empty repetition. They announce existence by giving a new face to a life. Palestinians create out of thin tear-gassed air. They challenge your stories, and they dream a conversa/on and an existence because what better way to voice your presence than turning away from the expected.

We aren’t going anywhere.

So really, to whoever will listen, hear and see: Pick up the seeds. Remember you are also a result of coincidences. Our only differences are the violent histories, presents and realities you refuse to face and that those suffering from imperialism and settler-colonialism carry for you.

Do your part.

Nada El-Omari ❞

#MAINARTIST