Confinement,imagination,and resistance in Palestine: The caricatures and graphic art of Mohammed Sabaaneh

Abstract

The violence that Palestinians experience in their everyday lives has been the subject of Palestinian as well as non-Palestinian artists for several decades. In this article, we explore the work of contemporary Palestinian cartoonist and graphic artist Mohammed Sabaaneh in relation to the cartoon work of Naji al-Ali, an artist active in the 1970s and 1980s. Both artists have sought to articulate the Palestinian experience of everyday struggle, the “everydayness” of life in Palestine, through humorous art. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Palestine as well as a close reading of the artistic work of the two artists, we argue that this art is a way of sharing the Palestinians’ everydayness of life under Israeli occupation, giving it visibility and voice, while at the same time exposing the violence. What emerges are caricatures and imaginative graphic art that at once represent instances of coping as well as of creative resistance. Ultimately, we see these works as imaginative and humorous manifestations of agency and resistance in the face of oppression and confinement.