A Palestinian artist and graphic novelist’s work is on display at The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology this month. The exhibition explores life in a Palestinian refugee camp.
Leila Abdelrazaq is a Palestinian comic artist and author of the book Baddawi.
Abdelrazaq uses the personal stories in her book to help readers understand the impact politics have on people at an individual level. She says it’s important for Palestinians to write their own histories and tell their own narratives on the political situation.
“In 1948 when the state of Israel was established, the Israeli army was going throughout Palestine ethnically cleansing villages all over historical Palestine and my family’s village is one of the villages that was ethnically cleansed. So they committed a massacre in the village and my family went to this refugee camp thinking that they would be able to return relatively soon,” Abdelrazaq says.
Abdelrazaq says that her family still lives in the camp over 68 years later. She feels it’s important to bring conversation back to the refugees and their right to return to home.
The book helps to start this conversation but Abdelrazaq says it has generated some controversy.
“A lot of people are able to learn a lot from it. I’ve heard people say that like, you know, they were able to understand something more about Palestine. At the same time, it’s surprising and always a reminder whenever I go to a different place. You often see, you know, the reality is that this idea that Palestinians deserve human rights, this idea that Palestinians should, you know, live in freedom, is not something, surprisingly, that you can take for granted. There’s different reactions everywhere you go and sometimes you run up against something that shouldn’t be controversial suddenly is controversial for some reason,” says Abdelrazaq.
Abdelrazaq’s comic art exhibition is on display at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology’s Apex Gallery thru April 29.
Abdelrazaq's website can be found by clicking the link bellow.
