Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
The Palestinian plastic creators did not lag behind, even if their schools differed from waging their struggle against the Zionist occupation, their feathers still play a major role among the tools of resistance in combating the injustice befalling the Palestinian cause and its people, and what confirms this as its backbone and foundation is its essential presence in the works of the Palestinian plastic pioneers. Under the title “Literature of Resistance,” the feather is a weapon, just as the pen communicates its voice with the truth through its bearer.
Since the outbreak of the Palestinian revolution, the Palestinian artist has not separated from his reality, but rather planted resistance in people and played a large and important role by highlighting it in his influential drawings and paintings.
Meanwhile, successive generations continued to carry a message with the same flavour, taste and criticism to advanced stages of time, and the use of plastic art remained the eternal obsession of the Palestinian artist, who was not affected or swayed by excessive modernity, but rather his school of realism remained taught and the focus of attention for everyone at the various stages of the issue.
In light of this, the Palestinian visual artist Muhammad Afifa says, “You must be an artist first, in all the requirements that the word means, in order to deserve the title of a Palestinian artist, and not just be born Palestinian.”
In his interview with Al-Quds Al-Arabi during his discussion of plastic art, he said that the requirements for artistic production cannot be bypassed, as they have been, from time immemorial, an aesthetic condition in visual construction and a human condition in intellectual construction, and with the absence of one or both of these conditions in some cases, we are faced with mere work. Emotionally, the cultural enemy (Zionism) is happy to display meager artistic works to present the Palestinians as less human and less cultural, noting that some focus on the most meager artistic works to achieve that goal, and the hardworking Palestinian artists who are distinguished by their artistic production are ignored.
He explained that the work of art has two elements. The first is the “visual structure,” the artistic anatomy, perspective, color harmony, etc., are aesthetic conditions, so that the visual structure is like a boat that carries the artist’s ideas and concerns. The stronger and coherent your visual structure is, the more able it is to carry the artist’s ideas and transmit them to the recipient quickly, breaking through barriers. The language and local culture of peoples, indicating in this context that talent is nothing but a cognitive attribute in the artistic field, and in fact, visual construction is diligence, work and continuous training to build these abilities just like building the body with muscles, but here the artist must develop and train the nervous and mental construction through knowledge and experiences. And continuous training on the job.
The second is the “intellectual construction” of the artistic work, and it must achieve clarity of the idea or story or what we can call the human message with the ambiguity of ideology. The visual artistic work must address the human mind with its different cultures and cognitive diversities, according to the artist Afifa, considering that screaming and emotion Naughtiness, begging, flattery, and most of these words reduce the value of the intellectual product of the artistic work, so that it remains merely a populist drawing that does not address the other, and sometimes it does not even address the self.
He pointed out that the artwork, whether it is a painting or a cartoon, is not a product that can be taken lightly. It is a human document that expresses either the weakness or strength of the artist. It is, in the following, an expression or reflection of the strength or weakness of the artist’s community, describing the production of some Palestinian painters at the time. The current action is like the action of a bear that killed its owner while trying to kill a fly.
At the conclusion of his speech, Afifa stressed that “we, as Palestinian artists, must focus on quality, not quantity, and not be led by the ‘I’ in the race for likes,” stressing that we, as Palestinian artists, must stop making caricature sandwiches to satisfy the recipient on the go, as much as we strive to make a feast. A visual that ingrains itself in the mind of the recipient. In addition, the creative artist relies in his style on multiple elements. His artistic series related to referring to the symbolism of Palestinian identity has a distinctive, deep style and a different character, especially his perceptions of resistance, steadfastness, asylum, the apartheid wall, the steadfast woman, the right of return, and many other symbols and connotations.
It is noteworthy that the Palestinian visual artist Muhammad Afifa holds Jordanian citizenship and worked as an independent cartoonist for 15 years. His drawings were published in the Jordanian newspaper “Al-Ghad” and “Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed”. He held 7 personal exhibitions (exhibitions of caricatures/paintings) and participated in artistic workshops. A group exhibition in Jordan and various comics participations.
He also received a number of different awards during the past years, 2010, Handhala Al-Ard Award - Naji Al-Ali International Cartoon Drawing Competition - organized by the Solidarity Association with the Palestinian People / and the HOMUR Group for Humor and Caricature Arts - Turkey.
In 2012, he received the Naji Al-Ali Award for Political Cartoon, hosted by the Palestine International Foundation in Amman, and then in 2019, he received the Mahmoud Kahil Award for Political Cartoon for 2018 - Lebanon/American University.
source
Achievements and Awards
- Years in active
: From
To