Personal Info
- Country of residence: Sweden
Information
On Regens Gattan Street in the city of Landskrona, south of the Kingdom of Sweden, Palestinian visual artist Mamoun Al-Shayeb is busy in his studio, where he displays most of his artistic paintings in front of passing Swedes and members of immigrant communities. As he drops new bursts of color with his brush on one of his not-yet-completed paintings, while she is kneeling in front of his chair, which faces those standing in front of his studio, staring at his paintings, rarely one of which is devoid of various Palestinian details.
Mamoun Al-Shayeb comes from Tira Haifa in Palestine. He arrived in Sweden in 2013, migrating there from the Yarmouk camp in Damascus, where he was born in 1960. He completed his university studies at the College of Fine Arts, Department of Oil Painting in 1984, and worked as an art professor in UNRWA schools there for twenty-five years.
Within five years of his immigration to Sweden, Al-Shayeb succeeded in opening many of his personal exhibitions in all cities and won many awards as well. Al-Shayeb told Al-Quds Al-Arabi: To be Palestinian, you are the owner of a just cause, and to be an artist, you are the owner of a humanitarian cause and a message that combines human, children, and women’s rights in the world. I believe that art, with its beauty and splendor, must have a lofty and great goal.
Alienation may increase nostalgia and longing for childhood, family, and comrades. Here in Sweden, every morning I go to my private studio, where I begin my work with a cup of Arabic coffee. I hold my oud and hum an oriental tune to it, then I open my color booklet, searching for the details of my people’s concerns buried deep within me. I hold my brush to draw my first colors on that white space, and my memory revives with childhood dreams stagnant within me to one day return to my homeland, Palestine.
Al-Shayeb adds about his experience in the process of integrating with Swedish society and the impact of art on conveying the concerns of his cause. He says, “In Sweden, I meet many Swedish intellectual friends. I talk to them about my components and my concerns in my lines and colors. They have convictions that were implanted in them by the Western media machine, so my task was very difficult.” In highlighting the right of our people to return and self-determination. When I arrived in Sweden, I started going to museums and art galleries to get to know the new culture closely. Then I realized the necessity of development. I had two goals in Sweden, the first was to reach society through my artistic works to gain solidarity and greater support for the Palestinian people, and the second was that there was a Palestinian generation being born in Sweden. There is a need to belong, and those who live here know that this new generation is greatly shunned by the temptations of European life and immersed in the corridors of capitalism and its claims of civilization, so I chose to wander around Swedish and European cities in order to display my work with the aim of contributing to creating conditions that help support the cause. Palestinian.
Searching for perfection
In the context of his diagnosis of his artistic specificity and his plastic school, Al-Shayeb says, “It is not an easy matter for an artist to choose to delve into the realist school, because realism is a great challenge. It is the constant search for perfection and the embodiment of the human condition. I dare in the realist school with impressionistic touches and expressive simulation in order to give a large space to roam in the world of expression through color and a sense of joy and optimism, and when you have a goal and a cause to defend, this overlap in these schools allows you to reach To the highest levels of artistic expression.
He added, “The lucky artist is the one who has a great, lofty goal that he seeks. The artist must be a kind politician who reaches out to the viewer and convinces him of the justice of his cause. Especially if you are a Palestinian visual artist, you must highlight the justice of the Palestinian cause. The topics and ideas are many and you will not need a great effort to reach them.” To the idea in the painting, we have the suffering and struggle that fills the Hermitage with paintings.
In the field of keeping pace with the development taking place in the methods and schools of fine art in the world, Mamoun Al-Shayeb says, “I research, think, develop, and study the works and techniques of international artists, and I always have a goal in every new painting I draw. I say this painting will be my best work of art, and perhaps Some people believe in the saying that the artist enters his studio, closes his door, and then creates. This saying, in my opinion, is far from the truth, because the artist must follow up on everything that his people are exposed to, including abuse, suppression of freedoms, siege, killing, arrests, concerns, demolition of homes, and racial discrimination. There must be Voices defending just causes, and if you want someone to hear you, you have to make noise so that they will pay attention to you. It is the duty of every artist, writer, and researcher to make some noise, and we often search for that on social media platforms, and it is a platform that we must exploit in order to highlight the justice of our cause and the rights of others. Our people, and we must not neglect that we have to deliver two messages, the first to the Arab societies that live within European societies that they have a duty to communicate their cause in the correct manner, and the second message is to the Western societies themselves to correct the false images about us and educate public opinion about the facts of the events and facts through the art that we have. Those who arrived here before us worked, worked diligently, and achieved great results, the most important of which is Sweden’s recognition of the State of Palestine. We did not reach this result simply, but rather with great efforts. The mission of the Palestinian artist in Europe can be in the easy-difficult way, meaning it is easy to present art in these societies and it will not prevent you. Nobody, but at the same time you face the difficulty of not having a popular base to help you rise and advance as a visual artist. Arab societies in these countries often view it as a traditional decoration and nothing more, while fine art is a creative state that reaches the recipient with lightning speed. It is enough to look Once to the painting in order to reach the result that the artist desires.
Sherine Abu Aqla
And Mahmoud Darwish
There is no doubt that the visitor to Mamoun Al-Shayeb’s exhibitions or his studio will have the opportunity to enjoy sensory enjoyment and taste a distinctive plastic art while wandering between his paintings, and perhaps get lost between deep details that contain the brush and the colors are elaborate in highlighting the Palestinian identity and culture mixed as a situation that has become one with the continuing suffering of a people living under the weight of the occupation and its practices. Daily arbitrariness. Perhaps among the paintings that most impressed us and aroused our curiosity were two paintings, one of which was by journalist Sherine Abu Aqla, which was painted with unparalleled mastery, summarizing in its details the Palestinian human being, burdened with his cause, his social, political and humanitarian makeup, and his expected fate in the same place and time. As for the second, it was of the great poet Mahmoud Darwish, standing tall and seated with a majesty that leaves a great impression on the viewer of the meanings that the poet always referred to in his life through his patriotic and enthusiastic poems. One even imagines himself in front of a new poem that has not been read yet.
Al-Shayeb says about these two paintings, “There are many who stood against the occupation, through their work, such as Sherine Abu Aqla. The event of her martyrdom was painful for everyone, and at that time I started drawing the first lines in Shirin’s painting and called it Icon of Palestine. I was living with this painting in all its details. It had everything that loved life and freedom. It had a defiant smile. It had optimism and hope. It had the smell of homeland. And the smell of olives, our homes, our fields, and the keys to our return.
After I published the painting, I received a call from Palestine, from Walid Al-Omari, director of the Al Jazeera channel’s office in Palestine. He said touching words to me. He said, “You had a role through this painting in reviving the case of Sherine Abu Aqla.” Then I forgot the long hours during which I was painting the painting. Shirin and I sometimes stay up until the morning in order to create an artistic state that can reach everyone. Through our art, paintings, and cultural works, we can do what politicians cannot do. People did not stop to listen long to a political speech today as much as they can stand long in front of that painting that expresses the tragedy of a Palestinian child who has been besieged for many years and is denied food and medicine, or to that Palestinian woman who waits every day for a prisoner or a martyr. This activist urges you every day to... You hold a brush and draw this situation in order for her voice to be heard by all the world. This is your duty as an artist, and the artist does not only have to paint flowers, landscapes, etc. Art has a message that everyone must strive to convey the voice of truth, and I appeal to all Palestinian artists in the world to convey the voice of this people because we are the people most capable of conveying this truth.”
As for Mahmoud Darwish’s painting, Al-Shayeb comments, “I have always lived Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry since I learned that the hand can be made of stone and thyme, and that they must take the graves of their ancestors and leave, and that on this earth there is nothing worthy of life (a quote from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish). I searched a lot for a picture of Mahmoud Darwish, and perhaps I searched among dozens of pictures until I found in this shot something worthy of life. I found a stone and thyme, and I found it saying (It is time for you to gather the bones of your ancestors and leave). Being an artist is not an easy decision. I may have many messages to convey. I deliver it to the world, but I first like to send greeting cards with freedom for Palestine written on them, and this is through my paintings that you see through Mahmoud Darwish and Sherine Abu Aqla, the Palestinian mother who sits on the doorstep of her house waiting for the return of her captive son, or that man who sits on the ruins of his house demolished by the occupation. And the examples go on and on.
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Achievements and Awards
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