AHMAD CANAAN

Illegal Habitants collection

Despite the barriers and the barbed wires that divide this land, there is a social and vital blending between the Palestinians residing in both sides. This urges the Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian territories to illegally enter the cities and villages of the Israeli side, to work secretly. They become fugitives, constantly pursued by the Israeli authorities; therefore they are obliged to live in the mountains and hide between the trees, to disappear from sight and escape.

In one of these paintings (Illegal Habitants 2) the artist drew the night-shelter. He portrayed the mattress\bed they sleep on, with some sheets and shoes scattered in the painting's space, between the trees. Here the artist re-evokes Van Gogh's The Bedroom. By choosing these elements without the presence of humans, these artworks become more expressive of the humanity of these people, who are like other people, but whose destiny and life circumstances rendered them illegal Habitants in a village\city, that might be their grandparents's original homeland. the utilization of these elements- the bed and the sheets, which definitely belong to people, enables the artists to express a sociopolitical situation experienced by thousands of people. All this has provided the artworks with a deeper expressive force and took it out of the Palestinian Arab framework, to become an expressive symbol of thousands of displaced people in the world, sleeping on the ground and covering with the sky. Concerning the colors, the artist persisted in highlighting the colors of the Galilean landscape, mainly the olive trees. There is an interpenetration of different colors-albeit somewhat contradictory- that play a harmonious melody, which is consistent with the idea and the expressive strength.