Draft:New Visions

New Visions (نحو التجريب والإبداء) was a Palestinian art movement that was founded by the four artists Sliman Mansour, Vera Tamari, Tayseer Barakat (b.1959, Gaza), and Nabil Anani in 1987.

The movement was part of cultural resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestine at the time of the First Intifada. The four New Visions artists (Mansour, Tamari, Barakat and Anani) chose to boycott art supplies imported from Israel in favour of local natural materials, and began use traditional methods of craftsmanship to produce works of fine art (paintings and posters), including mixed media assemblage and earthworks. It has been interpreted in terms of tying the process of the production of art to land and struggle. It is lauded with bringing the political in symbolic form of the land (e.g. as mud, hay, leather) into the artwork. It has been described as an "artists' precursor to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)," highlighting the continued centrality of nonviolent resistance to the Palestinian cause over time. The art created within New Visions moved away from the symbolic to more abstract art. Its audience was broad and included targeting an international audience as well as the Palestinian public. Although not widely known, New Visions became a model for political art in Palestine, and has had a lasting impact on contemporary art practice.

Influence
The New Visions had an important influence on Palestinian art. Dar El-Nimer for Arts and Culture and the Institute for Palestine Studies called the New Visions artists "four of the founding members of the modern art movement in Palestine". The movement is considered to have ushered Palestinian fine art towards a more contemporary art practice. In 2018 the A. M. Qattan Foundation (AMQF) honoured the New Visions art collective in a ceremony in Ramallah. During the ceremony artist Khaled Hourani spoke about the impact and accomplishments of New Visions, which AMQF describes as having "set the foundations for contemporary practices of Palestinian visual arts".

For Mansour, the New Visions movement was a turning point in his art production. He said of the shift:"'The intifada mainly liberated us. Our art became more expressive of ourselves and more abstract. We were no longer limited to the traditional way of doing art to please a specific public. For example, I began working with clay and this made me engage in sculpture.”"

Materials
The First Intifada led the artists to question their use of art materials imported from Israel. Mansour recounts: "People were planting vegetables in their gardens so as not to buy anything from Israel. We thought, 'Why don’t we do the same as artists? Why should we buy paint from Israeli shops and then use it to paint against them?'." The artists instead started using materials found in nature such as clay, chalk, animal glue, straw, mud, leather and plant-based dyes such as coffee, henna, tea and spices.

Both Mansour and Tamari worked with clay with added hay for consistency. Mansour considered mud as "captur[ing] the essence of Palestinian rootedness as well as the fragmentation in the Palestinian political landscape and geography—echoed in the cracks growing in the mud as it dries." Tamari wrote of her relation with the land in working with clay: "The magical landscape as I ride daily from Ramallah to Birzeit casts a spell on me, repeated patterns of rolling hills softly blend one into another until they smoothly vanish in the horizon uniting within the infinite space of the Mediterranean. Earth and water unite. The magic is also in the broken surface of the rocks, in the dried bushes clinging to terraced ridges, in twisted olive-tree trunks telling textured stories of history and time. The magic is everywhere on my daily trip from Ramallah to Bierzeit giving boundless energy of inspiration. But paralleling this landscape is another one, ruptured and brutal, disfiguring the tranquillity of my vision. My clay images at this stage often reflect the duality of this ruffled reality."

Barakat, a painter, used wood and fire as his primary art materials. Barakat looked at the relationship between the cosmic, earthly and metaphysical and asks: "Can we always retain the spirit of things? Can we abridge time and find the missing chains in the development of the local plastic arts, much of which has gone with the burning down of the library of Baghdad in the 13th century?"

Anani, also a painter, worked with leather from Al-Khalil dyed with tea, coffee, henna and spices. Anani described the process of material experimentation: "After a great deal of searching I chose leather as my new medium. It was an inspiration from the ancient Middle Eastern traditions. [...] I use simple figures and decorative designs which I adapted from traditional motifs in embroidery, straw-work, pottery and rugs. For color, I use the warm red/brown gradations of the henna dye."

All four artists utilized assemblages in their work, drawing from traditions of Islamic art and geometric patterns.

Exhibitions
The New Visions collective began holding group exhibitions inspired by the potential of a free Palestine, and the role that art could play in civic resistance, in 1989. In total, they had three exhibitions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories


 * New Visions, 1989, Jerusalem (New Visions also travelled to Germany, Italy and the United States  )


 * New Visions, 1991, Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman, Jordan


 * Rendezvous, 23 April - 7 May 2016, Zawyeh Gallery, Ramallah, OPT
 * There is a light that never goes out, 10 - 28 April 2018 at the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center and Bab idDeir Art Gallery, Ramallah, OPT
 * Challenges Of Identity, 30 April - 11 May, 2019, Dalloul Art Foundation (DAF), Beirut, Lebanon
 * Gaza: Recalling the Collage of a Place, a 3D virtual exhibition showcasing the early works of Gazan artist Tayseer Barakat, Zawyeh Gallery, Ramallah, 1 July - 15 September 2024.

Al-Wasiti Art Centre
In 1994, the New Visions movement founded the Al-Wasiti Art Centre in a renovated traditional Arab-style house in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem. The art centre had both a permanent collection, a library as well as temporary exhibitions. The inauguaral exhibition was, From Exile to Jerusalem, and it included the works of Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Laila Shawa, Kamal Boullata and Vladimir Tamari. In 2002, the art centre closed down; in 2005, its archive was donated to Al Hoash Gallery.

Themes and Symbolism
New Visions artists focused on iconic representations of Palestinian culture and pastoral life. Dr. Yazid Anani asserts that these included representations of the Palestinian "village, Jerusalem, refugees, the Israeli militaristic machine, prisoners, olive trees, women in embroidered traditional dresses".

Artist and scholar Samia Halaby identified that when certain themes were depicted, they symbolised broader meanings to the Palestinian viewer, for example: horses signifying revolution, flutes signifying ongoing resistance, weddings symbolising the cause of the Palestinian people, keys referring to the inalienable Right of return of the Palestinians to their homes, the sun implying freedom and a gun & dove pairing implying peace after the struggle for liberation.

Other common symbols include colors from the Palestinian flag, village scenes, Tatreez (embroidery) motifs, chains and prison bars. Works commemorating martyrs would sometimes depict specific deceased individuals or would collage images related to their lives, and were often hung at their grave or home.