Report

Letter from Amman

In Jordan Mark Sheerin encounters softly spoken artworks that nevertheless burn with urgency

Joe Namy, Until this Elegy Ends, 2024

Jasleen Kaur accepted the 2024 Turner Prize with a powerful speech in solidarity with Gaza, live on BBC News. Since editorial policy at the BBC is largely silent on this issue, the broadcast itself became news. Even artists such as Nan Goldin or the collective Led by Donkeys cannot insert their message of support for Gaza into mainstream media like this, though they prompt an incredible number of views and interactions on social media. Galleries in the UK have similarly come up against obstacles; for example, the pro-Israel lobby group UK Lawyers for Israel in 2021 applied pressure to the University of Manchester over the artistic programme of the director of its Whitworth Gallery, Alastair Hudson, who subsequently departed for Germany (Artnotes AM459), and the same group has sent legal threats to Arnolfini (Artnotes AM477) and even a hospital over a display of children’s art (Artnotes AM465); more positively, however, recent exhibitions of Palestinian artists at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge and the Mosaic Rooms in west London continue to take place, albeit without drawing significant attention. Given this climate of reticence in the UK to call out Israel’s continuing genocide in Gaza – as described by the UN Special Committee at the end of last year – it was a jolt to visit Darat al Funun in Amman, where all four of its exhibitions focused attention on the lives of Palestinians, and the death and destruction that they face daily in Gaza. It appears that this Jordanian institution is doing more than perhaps any other to respond to this war through the work of artists.

It is calculated that more than half of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian origin, displaced from the time of the Nakba onwards – even Queen Rania of Jordan is Palestinian. They are joined by encampments of Syrian refugees who add to the cultural mix. Downtown souvenir shops are well stocked with keffiyehs and keyrings that bear pan-Arab flags. Differences obviously exist between Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians, but it can seem as if these are limited to variations in the recipe for za’atar, an ancient form of seasoning made from wild herbs. When an art gallery ventures into geopolitics in this part of the Middle East, solidarity with those in Gaza and the occupied territories can be taken as read.

While there are several contemporary art spaces in Amman, including MMAG Foundation, Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts and Wadi Finan Gallery, I found myself focusing on the work of Darat al Funun – the largest contemporary art space in the city. Since 1988, Darat al Funun has continually ventured into politics and much, if not most of the gallery’s work reflects territorial injustices. The possibility of such a well-funded, consistently critical space arises from the historic patronage of Khalid Shoman, a Palestinian banker who was once the Arab world’s most successful financier. Stepping in from the dusty roadside on al-Weibdeh – one of the seven hills on which Amman rests – the calming cool of the building helped me settle ahead of the numerous confrontational works on show. In addition to four split-level gallery spaces, Darat al Funun has a historic architectural setting that offers a sculpture garden, a wonderful library and a custodial garden for its 6th century Byzantine church, which lies in ruins.

Starting from the upper level, ‘Under Fire’ collected a number of works on paper, primarily drawings by artists who are refugees in their own land. The artworks were smuggled out of Gaza and, as the war continues to progress, it is unclear whether some of the artists are still alive, or are injured or even dead. Basil al Maqousi, Majed Shala, Raed Issa and Sohail Salem have all lost family and friends, as well as their studios, and sometimes a lifetime’s work. Working with the materials they have to hand, they document the many overcrowded camps in the territory. While all stylistically different, the four artists conveyed fragility and resilience, made powerfully affecting by their proximity to mortal danger.

Joe Namy’s Until this Elegy Ends, 2024, tackled Israeli destruction of ancient olive groves at Deir Minas in Lebanon using deadly white phosphorous. Restful potted trees and soothing field recordings provided a clear statement of the cultural importance of agriculture and folk music in the building of a nation’s identity – one that cannot be destroyed. In a darker space, Namy suspended a conical speaker that played the work of Lebanese composer Halim El-Dabh, the cumulative works suggestive of how trees might tie a people to their land while music and culture travels.

The solo exhibition ‘Consider’, by the artist who goes by the symbol Ж, also reflected on the current situation in Gaza. In a black-box space, a simple strip of celluloid played on a loop, which had been punctured 40,000 times to reflect the number of recorded Palestinian deaths at the time of its making – a number that, of course, continues to rise. As if an insomniac’s starry night, the effectiveness of this film was its material abstraction in the face of such horror.

‘When Nothing Remains But You’ brought together a group of six artists that reflected on the history of the war in Gaza. Areej Kaoud’s elegiac series ‘They Never Left’, 2024, stood out: the work comprised a series of Perspex boxes that each framed a wrapper from a bar of Nabulsi soap; looking more closely reveals a number inscribed in light blue representing those killed in the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Given that one in 50 Gaza residents have been erased, the soap wrappers grimly literalise an image of ethnic cleansing. When I spoke to the artist, her tone was one of restrained anger at the historical events that have come between her and the possibility of living as a free Palestinian.

I came away from Darat al Funun understanding that protest can be softly spoken, but the relative silence of the West appears inhuman when you meet people directly affected. In the West, Israeli lives are continually deemed of infinitely greater value than those of their Arab neighbours. With notable exceptions, artists and institutions in the UK have been too reluctant for too long to condemn the violence that feels so painful in Amman.

As evening fell upon our hotel by the Dead Sea, our hosts pointed out the lights from illegal Israeli settlements just across the water. They also told us how in the sky above Amman in October last year they had sighted, just as now, missiles fired into Israel from Iran. When the blood has dried and the building dust settled after Gaza, we shall wake up to find the moral authority of the art establishment also in ruins. If we are to ever rebuild, we need a new commitment to freedom of speech: an urgent freedom, as if the conflict was on our doorstep.

Mark Sheerin is a cultural historian based in Brighton.

First published in Art Monthly 488: Jul-Aug 2025.