Artist imagines Palestine through conquest imagery, female form
An exhibition by the artist Vera Tamari approaches Palestine through military helmets, the female form and landscapes.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — In front of a solemnly dark wall, eleven military helmets and face guards rest atop metallic rods, conjuring images of heads on sticks, perhaps severed in battle. In Vera Tamari’s powerful piece “Warriors Passed by Here,” each piece of glazed ceramic headgear represents the army of a conqueror that ruled Palestine, her home and a frequent focus of her work.
The Jerusalem-born Tamari works primarily with clay to create sculptures, bas-reliefs and “sculptured paintings,” in which the curves of the female body symbolize land and nature. At the age of 30, Tamari became the first artist to open a ceramics studio on the West Bank, in 1975, in al-Bireh, near Ramallah. Her latest exhibition, also titled “Warriors Passed by Here,” can be seen at Gallery One, in the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah.
