Exit into the light (الخروج الى النور) by Nabil Anani

Review by Chirine Yamout

The short:

After the First Intifada (First Uprising) broke out in 1987 in Palestine, many Palestinians, fueled by the accumulation of years of oppression, abuse and mistreatment,  took to the streets to protest in resistance. Boycotting Israeli products was a form of resistance that can be observed in Anani’s artwork in his memoir, which came to life out of rebellion.

The long:

Nabil Anani was born in the Palestinian countryside village of Latrun, in 1943. He is considered one of the founders of the contemporary Palestinian Plastic Art Movement. He and his family has lived through a lot of difficulties in an occupied Palestinian, and through these hardships he found sanctuary in art. And so, in a space where art was not a priority and rather inaccessible, Nabil alongside his colleagues founded the Palestinian Plastic Artists Association in the 1970s, which shaped the features of the current Palestinian Plastic Movement. During the First Intifada, Nabil and a group of other artists started experimenting with “revolutionary art”, in which they depicted the rootedness of the Palestinian identity to give people moral support in their resistance. Hence, this memoir is a collective of personal stories, told in a spirit of humor, through which history is told.

The read or not to read:

A must read. More than often, the Palestinian struggle is depicted from a political lens, it is so very rarely that Palestinians are humanized when talked about. Reading this book allows the readers to have an insight about what makes Palestinians, as more than just numbers and statistics, but as a resilient people, who sometimes tell their stories through art.