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ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Welcome to This Being Human…I’m your host Abdul Rehman-Malik. On this podcast from the Aga Khan Museum, I talk to extraordinary people from all over the world whose life, ideas and art are shaped by Muslim culture.

 

NADIR NAHDI:

There’s a new generation that has a very unique to how they see themselves as young Muslims in the modern world.

 

TANYA MUNEERA WILLIAMS:

I am this wide eyed girl. I’m like, I want it all, I want to experience it all.

 

GINELLA MASSA:

Everyone has a story. Sometimes you just have to find out what it is.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Like the poem that inspires this podcast, The Guest House, by Sufi poet Jallaludin Rumi, we’re talking to people who seek meaning and joy in work and life…regardless of what the day brings.

 

MALAK MATTAR: 

Palestine is Palestine, you know. It’s this uniqueness. Richness. It’s people that no matter how difficult life gets for them, they are still humans. And they would help you if you fall in the street. Really.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Malak Mattar was driven to painting because of war. She grew up in the Gaza Strip. And she started to paint at the age of 14, when her city was under attack.

 

When she started sharing her work online, it got international attention. Before long, she was exhibiting her work all over the world, with collectors eager to get it on their walls. Her art has been featured in exhibitions everywhere from Jerusalem to India, to the US House of Representatives – as well as on the cover of GQ Middle East.

 

Her paintings are beautiful, brightly coloured, expressionist-style images centred on Palestinian women. There’s such an intense mix of emotions in them – hope, despair, and peace.

 

Malak is 22 now, but she speaks with the weight and the wisdom of someone who’s lived a much longer life.

 

I called Malak Mattar in Istanbul, where she just wrapped up a bachelors degree at Istanbul Aydin University.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Malak, welcome to This Being Human.

 

MALAK MATTAR:

Thank you. Thank you so much for this incredible introduction. It’s such a pleasure to be here today.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

It is wonderful to have you here. Malak, I want to start talking about the process of your work. You’ve talked about how you started painting in response to war and this need to document what you were living through. What was it that made you say, I’m going to pick up a paintbrush rather than, say, take photographs or write stories?

 

MALAK MATTAR:

I grew up in a very artistic environment. My uncle was a visual artist, so his medium was more painting, illustrations, photography. So I was really inspired by this even before becoming an artist. So the process of turning a white canvas into a very powerful image that really changed something from the inside, made me feel something, has been something that I was curious about as a kid. I was painting in my school in my favorite class, which was art. You know, I remember once we were asked to draw a family with coloured pencils. And what really encouraged me is my teacher holding this, showing it around and saying, look at the best piece art that Malak has done. And she put it on the wall. So when I remember how happy I was, it was like the first exhibition, really. So it stayed there for the whole semester. But it didn’t really start till this very life changing event. So by the age of 14, I was not only, you know, a child growing up, I was a war survivor. I do think that surviving a war is one of the most harsh experience that humankind can experience, because you really lose the humanity. You see a loss to humanity. But what really made me like having this urge that I want to get my emotions out, was witnessing my neighbour who lived one block away in the same street. She was part of my childhood because we have such a beautiful connection in Palestine where families, neighbors are really like family. So I saw her getting killed in front of me. She was an old woman. All I remember is how she was loving – people, children, animals, feeding animals. There was a very heavy bombing that was bombed into her house. My house was filled with dust, but once it disappeared, we saw the ambulance recovering her, not even her body, but parts of her body. And you see the scene of her husband’s mourning and in shock and traumatized. So this event that happened within less than a minute has made me shocked for years. Until the very moment I still have nightmares. I still have flashbacks. So this thing has, I could not really speak about it because speaking in the times of war is such a luxury that you don’t have because it doesn’t work like you go to your mother, hey, I’m scared. We are all, you know, a witness of this traumatizing experience. So I decided to get in. Based on my background of how art was a self-expression, I brought some of papers, pencils, and I started sketching. Of course, my sketches were heavily impacted by what’s going on around me, so it was destroyed buildings from my neighborhood. Over a quarter of my neighborhood was demolished. And then the first medium I used was watercolor.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Hmm.

 

MALAK MATTAR:

That was a gift from my school. And I was like, I liked how neat and clean it was. So I kept it clean for a while. And then I ruined it. And this time, because everything was ruined. But it was a beautiful ruin because it was my first time really starting my practice as an artist painting every single day nonstop, sometimes missing meals. I just felt like I found what I was meant for.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

You’ve also said elsewhere and now I think I kind of understand it. You said that you paint because of conflict, not despite it.

 

MALAK MATTAR: 

Yes.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

You know, and as you’re describing your relationship with your art, like art being like a friend, like being like an intimate companion. That starts to makes sense because what you’re describing is an engagement with the conflict, like you’re fully engaged with what is going on around you. Your art isn’t an escape, but it’s a way of making sense of it. Would that be right?

 

MALAK MATTAR:

Well, when I was only 13, I was painting from my instinct without really wanting to be seen in the media or being labeled as something or… you know, I was painting what I liked, what I disliked as a kid. What I wanted, what I did not want. The freedom I was lacking. So I was painting simply my life, which in the media they called it activism. When I was 14, I was not really good at English. So I had, what is this activism? So I had to Google it and I said, but I’m just really sharing my story and I’m sharing my emotions as honest as I can, because I was not really taught art in academy or university. I loved art because there was a freedom in it. The freedom to experiment, to learn, to use mediums. But the most important thing is to really do it from the heart, to really not overthink it. That was my motto when I was like of much younger. I also in the early beginning of my work, it was, as I said, it started within this heavy time of attacks, of disaster, of destruction and also grayness. So my artwork was depressing. Like, I also used elements of blood of things that I’ve witnessed, of destruction, of the loss. A mother losing her child. A whole family moved up from that family registry in the Gaza strip. Also, the dreams that were shattered. Because you don’t only kill humans, you kill their dreams, you kill also their family and their surroundings. So, yeah, but after I left Gaza, which is the whole story that we can get into because Gaza is seized, it’s a prison…

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Absolutely.

 

MALAK MATTAR:

My artwork started getting brighter. I started having a positive outlook because as a person now I have joy in life. I want to live. I see the blessing of being alive. And I want my artwork to celebrate life as much as possible. And to always see the fraction of color as despite of the black and white that I grew up in.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mm hmm. I want to think a little bit about, you know, the things that were sort of feeding you and influencing you. Was there a particular artist that spoke to you in a visceral, deeply personal way? Was there someone who you kind of went to and said, Ah! that’s who I am inspired by, that’s who I’m sort of learning from or-or-or taking from.

 

MALAK MATTAR:

So I remember I saw a magazine or an art book where it had Picasso’s work and I said, This is it. He is my favorite. This is my favorite artist ever. So I was obsessed. Even before the art book discovery, the name was always like there. Picasso. She thinks she’s Picasso or like, you know, so the name is very prominent where I grew up and also in my art school. Sorry, in my schools growing up. So I was fascinated by his colors, by his compositions, by the bravery he had, by the character. But of course, learning more about his life, it’s not very perfect. But of course, he’s such an important artist to learn from. So, of course, people could see also the influence of Picasso on my early beginnings.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

I love the idea that Picasso was teaching you in absentia, that that he didn’t have to be there for you to learn from him and from his work. And I think that’s all about the power of imagination, isn’t it?  I mean that as an artist, clearly as someone who’s feeling as deeply and as strongly as you were driven to painting really by the circumstances and the situation that you found yourself in, that of course, it’s so natural that you would connect with incredible artists and influences and that you would make all that part of your own. I think that’s kind of a, that’s a kind of a powerful for me, is like a real kind of powerful narrative of the way in which the artist is almost like not merely a sponge, but you’re that vessel where influences come and then become transformed into something new and beautiful.

 

MALAK MATTAR:

That’s beautifully said. And I have to add one thing, which people might not think about, but there are no museums in the Gaza strip. So the chance of seeing Picasso or seeing Modigliani or Frida is like zero chance. The only way of learning about artists, living or not living, is through a screen. And that was later. That was not when I was 14. I was only into art books from my uncle and I was always discovering and I was always researching. But I remember the first time I was in France and I saw Picasso. It was such a powerful moment because it reminded me of the child, the inner child that first discovered his work, the admiration and, you know, it’s seeing a dream come true in front of you. So it’s also the power of not giving up. It’s not this particular thing, but the fact that you grew up in such a difficult place. But this discovery outside of the books, this constant trying to do something from little potential, this is the power. It’s not waiting for the perfect moment. It’s always following your instinct into learning as much, into growing, even when you are not in a good place to grow. You know it’s growing despite all the odds really.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Malak, tell me about the first time that you posted your work online and started getting some kind of response. Tell me about that process and tell me about the kind of responses that that you got and what was it that you first posted online?

 

MALAK MATTAR:

So I first posted my drawing. It was the first watercolor drawing of a woman stretching her arms above all the destroyed buildings, which is my neighborhood. And the woman is peaceful. There’s birds, there’s sky. So it’s like a new day, a new birth. After the war ended, I posted it on my feed. And I remember I was looking into sharing it into art pages. So to hear opinions and to listen to different comments. Then, you know, when I posted it and I started writing it both in English and Arabic, I started getting this, you know, this attention. People wanted to hear more. So I started sharing it with a story. Like, what inspired it. Why I did it. And I started getting contacted by organizations in my town in the Gaza Strip for art exhibition, which was very early, I was only 15. But there was an interest because they saw my work as very not traditional so I had this solo exhibition and I started getting a lot of requests from a foreign media. There was more interest into documenting not only the negative sides and consequences of the war, but also the bright side, which is art, music, painting. So when the media started writing in all languages, of course, the media called me the Picasso of Palestine. The Mexican media called me the Frida of Palestine.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

I love it. That’s incredible.

 

MALAK MATTAR:

And the, so yes, I was– like, they tried to make sense of me.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Of course!

 

MALAK MATTAR: 

Which is funny.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

And now Malak you have to tell me something. What does an art exhibition in Gaza look like in the absence of museums and galleries? Like, what did it look like to have your work exhibited in your city, in your community?

 

MALAK MATTAR:

Well, it was a huge thing for me to have my artwork exhibited when I just started last year. It doesn’t really happen. So I was so excited to have it. I did not exhibit it in a gallery. I told you we didn’t really have galleries and, but it was in a good place that has good lighting. It’s called Bait Al-Sahafa. It’s a journalist house for meetings, for culture, for reading tours. So I had the exhibition there. There was so many people coming and many people were so supportive. But also like old male professors, they came, they were not very nice. And I remember I had a political painting and an artist came to me. He’s my mum’s uncle, by the way. He’s also a very big artist. And he told me, you are a woman and women don’t paint politics. They paint beautiful things.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Wow.

 

MALAK MATTAR:

And I said, Wow, okay.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Yeah. How do you respond to that as a 15, 16 year old?

 

MALAK MATTAR:

I was like a bit, you know, surprised because of how female artists are viewed, because it’s always like, whenever like big artists go to woman exhibitions, it’s always, Oh, it’s nice to put in a house. Well, it’s decorative. It’s colorful enough. Lovely flowers. There is of course, like in everywhere there’s bias, there is inequality. And it’s the same in the Gaza strip, like it’s not going to be different. So I was a bit surprised actually. And I said, I remember I said, I’m free to express what I want. Like, I’m very nice, but sometimes I don’t shy away from saying the truth.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

No, I mean that’s also like a very confident and powerful thing for a teenager to say, you know, to someone who is an artist, or who’s known as an artist or who claims that name. But you know, I know you’ve exhibited your work all over the world now but to do that, you had to leave Gaza. And I think one thing that we all know about Gaza is that it’s an incredibly difficult place to leave. How were you able to leave Gaza and where did you first go?

 

MALAK MATTAR:

To give a bit of a glimpse of how small Gaza is, it’s only 365 kilometers and it’s located by the sea, but it’s occupied from the sky, from the land, from the sea, because, you know, you only have limited miles to cross the sea. So you can never travel by the sea. And the land is occupied because we have now two exits, the Israeli side and from the Egyptian side. And for most of the year, the both gates are shut. For me as a student, if I want to be a student and to get that permission to cross the Israeli side, it doesn’t work. It’s impossible. And from the Egyptian side, it’s very complicated. And also, I was only 17, and to have this international recognition and to have international exhibitions, I never was able to be present with my work and to have, like all artists, to be there with the paintings, with audience. So I remember, like my paintings really had more freedom than me. So I spoke to my family about my intention to pursue my education outside. And this idea was taken as a shock, you know, like, are you joking? Are you kidding? And it’s not only the border, but the fact that I was a young woman. And it’s against the tradition and customs and also the culture for a single woman to travel on her own. So, of course, it was a big no at the beginning. But, you know, I finally got the approval after a lot of insistence and struggle. But now to the bigger side, which is how to leave. I got this tuition fee scholarship to study in Istanbul, which I just graduated from thankfully. And I remember the difficulty, the humiliation of getting across, because I had to go through Rafah, to the Cairo airport, Matar El Qahira. I left alone. And of course, saying goodbye to the family felt like, felt like it’s going to be years till I meet them again, because you not only leave the prison, but you are leaving the prisoners behind with this fear that there’s a war going to be happening, whether they will live or not. So I got into the airport and I felt like…What’s this? I was so overwhelmed. I had this anxiety, like, where to do next. So with the help of a stranger, I was able to, to get a ticket to Istanbul. It was December. So, like, all the money I had for the first few months were unfortunately spent on this flight. And then I dreamed, the dream that I had is to actually…it’s going to be sounding silly, but to actually see the clouds from the window.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

From the window of the airplane.

 

MALAK MATTAR:

From the window of the plane, I was like wow, this is my dream shot. But I got into the plane and I slept all the way from the first minute to the last minute. I missed it. I was awakened by the woman. She said, hey, we just arrived. Leave. So I got in to Istanbul. Of course, I was crying because like finally, you know, it was a long way and of course, it was not an easy life. I had to work. I had to learn the language. The freedom that I dreamt of was like a crisis. You know what I mean? When you live all your life in a prison and then you are out, there’s so much freedom that it feels like an illness, that you feel like you are too tiny and you don’t exist, so it’s so overwhelming. But yeah, I’m now loving the freedom, you know, despite the fact that you can never feel fully free when your country is not truly free. Like I’m still a colonized human being. No matter what I see, no matter where I travel, there’s still this in me, you know, it’s in my genes.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

You know, I think people when they engage with your art– when I first engaged with your art, it’s a very visceral emotive experience. We are confronted with colour, contrast, brightness, movement. There’s so much movement in your paintings Malak, they don’t feel static. They feel like they’re moving and they’re in motion. And in a way, our eyes get caught up in the motion because we’re moving from colour to colour, image to image. But there’s one of your paintings which really, um, it did something to me. You know, my heart shifted in a particular way. And it’s your painting called Shelter. And it’s this kind of incredible image of a woman holding in the crook of her arm, a young woman. And their hair almost merges together and is moving off one side of the canvas and if you look closely, there’s like gold and flowers in the hair. And one of the women, the older woman, has her eyes closed. And it’s almost like in a state of deep comfort holding this young person. Maybe, it’s fear. But the young woman has her eyes open–

 

MALAK MATTAR: 

Right.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

And she’s looking off, you know, into the distance. But underneath her is this riot of green and red and gold and blue and images of birds and of nature, What was the genesis of Shelter? And what is this painting mean to you?

 

MALAK MATTAR:

Well, I visited the Gaza Strip for the first time last year to connect, to see my family, to paint, and to be home, you know, which is so precious. I became another attack survivor. You know, the years that I spent healing and being away from this environment, I become confronted with this harsh reality again. So I remember, like I was deeply moved by a mother who said, I and my children, we stay in one bed together because if we die, we die together. And if we live, we live together. And also my mom would say, like said this in 2014 when we were all– I remember once it got so intensified, the bombings, and all my family, we were seven members, we got under a table, you know, because you cannot really think with logic. It’s like, hello, the table is made of wood and and the rockets are made with tons of metal and, you know–

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Yeah, absolutely.

 

MALAK MATTAR: 

You know, so why the table? But, you know, you never act, you just want to protect your life. So this painting comes from this – it’s like people finding shelter, people loving each other in the worst of times. And this is true love. It’s not only you love people in the time of peace and in the time of sun and spring. You also love them in the time of war and disaster and life and the situation. So I wanted to document this, the conviction under the attack.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

It is this idea isn’t it, Malak that the moment we experience a kind of a shelter or someone looking out for us or someone protecting us, we are also open to the beautiful possibilities of life beyond conflict, isn’t it?

 

MALAK MATTAR:

Right. Right.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

That really speaks to me. I can’t move on until I ask you about one more painting.

 

MALAK MATTAR:

Right. Tell me.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

And that is a painting which I guess has been called various things online. But the name given to it is Thawra. And it is this kind of really, it’s an arresting work because it is clearly a Palestinian woman who is you know, drying up her sleeve and and showing us her muscles a lot like the famous Rosie the Riveter in American popular culture and yet she is wearing this shirt which has a very distinctive Palestinian design. But you know, what’s so unusual about this for me is that this woman has a halo around her head. Which immediately reminded me of Christian iconography, and particularly the Christian iconography of the Virgin Mary. And in fact, I almost noticed the Virgin Mary’s image more than I noticed Rosie the Riveter’s image. But also, I kind of got the feeling that this was a self-portrait.

 

MALAK MATTAR: 

Really?

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

But maybe it’s not. I did, I did get that feeling. I said, maybe this is Malak, you know, talking about herself and looking at us and telling us something about her. So, so you’re going to have to decode it for me now.

 

MALAK MATTAR:

So this painting, it’s, you know, as much as it looks very powerful and also can be shocking because, you know, if you are someone who doesn’t know Palestine or Palestinians very deeply, you would even assume it’s like we are oppressed. So, you draw this image like about us or oppressor. So I wanted this painting, it was actually painted after a tragic moment that really made me react so strongly, which is an artist from Palestine, from Bethlehem, her name was Israa Ghrayeb. She was a talented, wonderful young woman who was also independent and working on herself and making her own living. So she was, you know, I don’t remember exactly if it was fiancée or not, but she was out with a guy. And unfortunately, her father and her brothers, they beat her to death. So this event has shaken Palestine and has also made us highlight not only the occupation and its atrocities against us, but also the woman murder, which is not only in Palestine. It’s a global cause. But I wanted to also say that, you know, Palestinian women for me are the most powerful. I grew up around women who were never weak. My grandmother, she raised nine children when she was really young and she worked so hard to secure the living, the food everyday for her kids. My mom, she’s a strong woman who worked since she was 20 as a teacher. So I was surrounded with these powerful women that really inspired me AND inspired my strength. So I said that Palestinian women can be oppressed twice. It’s the occupation, but also the society. So this painting, it was a tribute for Israa, but also for all the Palestinian women, because we deserve to be respected. We deserve to be appreciated for enduring and for being resilient, for raising kids, for being mothers and sisters and daughters, despite of all the struggles and the injustices. So this painting is really for me, it’s out of my belief of our strength and of how much we deserve a different life for us.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

I have to say congratulations to you because you’VE just graduated from Istanbul Aydin University with a degree in political science and international relations.

 

MALAK MATTAR:

Right.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Which is interesting because you didn’t end up studying art in Istanbul. So I’m intrigued as to why you made that choice. But also, now that you’ve graduated Malak, what’s next? Are you planning to return to Palestine? Where does the 22-year old international art sensation Malak Mattar go from here?

 

MALAK MATTAR:

Well, I’m definitely going to study art, because with all respect to political science. Of course, it was a good experience, but it was very confusing. You know, it was confusing for me as an artist who thinks and feels deeply to study something that was really emotionless. And I was very engaged and involved in in the studies of political science and international relations, so it’s something that I learned a lot from, which is very positive, but of course, it has impacted negatively from taking me away from the track of focusing really into fine arts and artistry and learning and developing as an artist. But of course, I never regret it because it was the only way for me to leave the Gaza Strip. The school that offered me this tuition free scholarship did not have fine arts. They offered me to study medicine or political science. I chose political science to make this balance between art, traveling and also studies. But so the future will be master of fine arts and maybe like PhD, but let’s, let’s, step by step. But of course, I have to say this. Now I’m done, I need to focus on living only. You know, to wake up in the day to count my blessings, to enjoy life, despite its difficulty, to just really experience living with conscious and with awareness and with gratitude. And for me, I think I should be and I’m very grateful for life.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Malak, who or what would you like to invite into your guest house?

 

MALAK MATTAR:

Whoa. Well, there’s, I think, my grandmother. Unfortunately, she’s not here today. Like she passed away, but I think I’m so grateful for what she taught me and for how much she impacted my life. She never went to school. She got married when she was 13. She raised nine children. Five girls and four boys. They grew up in poverty, actually. And she was subjected to violence as well. But she was the most kind person, compassionate, loving, smart. She learned how to write and read later in her life to recite and read the Quran in her time. So I wish I had more time to learn deeper about her life, about the history, about who she is as a human.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Malak Mattar, thank you so much for sharing and giving your insight and joining us on This Being Human.

MALAK MATTAR: 

Thank you so much for inviting me.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Thank you for listening to This Being Human. We’ve included links to Malak’s astonishing paintings in the show notes.

 

This Being Human is produced by Antica in partnership with TVO. Our Senior Producer is Kevin Sexton. Our associate producer is Zana Shammi. Additional editorial support from Lisa Gabriele. Mixing and sound design by Phil Wilson. Original music by Boombox Sound. Stuart Coxe is the president of Antica Productions. Shaghayegh Tajvidi is TVO’s senior producer of podcasts. Laurie Few is the executive for digital at TVO.

 

This Being Human is generously supported by the Aga Khan Museum, one of the world’s leading institutions that explores the artistic, intellectual and scientific heritage of Muslim civilizations around the world. For more information about the museum go to www.agakhanmuseum.org. The Museum wishes to thank Nadir and Shabin Mohamed for their philanthropic support to develop and produce This Being Human.