A Tale of Two States (II)
枯榮 （二）
Oil, acrylic, sunflower seeds (in resin), sand, cement, plaster, paper, ash, bronze, iron, and crayon on canvas
Diptych,120 x 120cm each panel, 2023-24
A Tale of Two States II (detail) 枯
Dec. 10, 2023
Beginning “A Tale of Two States” anew, to tell his story,
Refaat Alareer, a well-known Palestinian poet, writer, and professor of literature, was killed three days ago by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Last month, he posted this poem:
“ If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made,
flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.”
A Tale of Two States II (detail) 榮
Dec. 25, 2023
On the Sophists
“It doesn’t matter if justice is on your side. You have to depict your position as just.” –– Benjamin Netanyahu
In a report titled “The Israel Project’s 2009 – Global Language Dictionary,” Israeli spin doctor Frank Luntz wrote that to turn Israel “from bully to victim,” “the fight is over ideology – not land; terror – not territory.”
The sophists – what matters is not truth but rhetoric.
Postmodern art – what matters is not the work but the rhetoric.
What is missing here? The intrinsic value. What is the intrinsic value of Art?
A Tale of Two States II (detail)
Dec. 29, 2023
A surgeon in Gaza had to perform an amputation on his own child without anaesthetics and then watched his child still die in excruciating pain. An earlier video showed a little boy screaming verses from the Quran during surgery. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), some 1,000 children in Gaza have had limbs amputated without anaesthesia since Oct. 7. While hiding from the bombs and bullets, they are now living in cold, thirst, hunger, diseases, and ruins. I hope that the three children I’ve painted for the “Tale” had already “left in a blaze—and bid no one farewell, not even to their flesh, not even to themselves.” It’s too cruel to survive.
A Tale of Two States II (detail)
Jan. 11-12, 2024
War on Narrative
In The Hague, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearing opened with South Africa charging Israel – a state founded on the claim of being the victim of genocide – with genocide.
The South African team delivered a state-of-the-art oral argument, despite most mainstream media in the UK (including the BBC) refusing live coverage of the South African case presentation, but then live streaming the Israeli response the next day.
Jan. 26, 2024
The ICJ ruling. 公道自在人心
A Tale of Two States II (detail)
Feb 1, 2024
小结
构图组成：
葵花籽的象征意义：
仇恨的种子—热忱的种子
绝望的种子—希望的种子
毁灭的种子—创造的种子
纷争的种子—和平的种子
Feb. 4, 2024
A sense of disappointment always creeps in every time I finish a painting. Even though my work is the only thing that truly feels like a part of me, everything else in life seems like pretence. Art is more real than life.
What is Art? There is so much hope of catching it when I start a work, but it always escapes when I finish the work.
Is Art, like God, sui generis? If so, how can I know Art? The answer(?): not through abstraction, but by analogy.