Aseel Tayah has been making art for more than half her life. As a child living in occupied Palestine, it became a tool to express feelings of loss and frustration. She would go on to study visual art and photography at Beit Berl College in Israel, where she was the only Palestinian, and the only Arabic-speaking student in her class.
Tayah moved to Australia 10 years ago, to live with her Syria-born husband. Now 36 and based in Melbourne, her work is currently focused on large-scale and collaborative works that share stories about Palestinian life, culture and history – and when we speak over Zoom, she is busy rehearsing and preparing for A’amar, her forthcoming immersive theatre work for the Sydney festival; as well as a series of storytelling events at the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, titled Untold Palestine.
A’amar means “may it keep going” in Arabic and is Tayah’s attempt at “bringing part of my life as a Palestinian into a 90-minute show”. Seated on cushions on the floor, the audience will watch as a four-course Palestinian meal is prepared, before sharing in the food as Tayah and her cast of performers and musicians tell personal stories through prose, poetry, objects and song.
Premiering at Parramatta’s Riverside theatre on 25 January, the work was in development before the current escalation of violence in Gaza, and its script has evolved continuously in response to the horrors unfolding there daily. The process highlighted the challenge of creating a cultural work in the most turbulent of times: how can Tayah accurately represent a subject – Palestine and its people – that is under an ever-changing threat? “Since the war, instead of talking about bread, we are [now] talking about the lack of bread,” Tayah says. “Instead of talking about life, we’re talking about staying alive.”
Tayah describes her work as “cultural art experiences”, which bring together artists and non-artists, adults and children, on themes of displacement and migration. She sees art-making as vital during times of crisis. “I believe artists are the most beautiful changemakers. Artists can move nations if they want to,” she says. “[They have a] pure channel to transform feelings and emotions into something that goes straight to heart.”
In 2016, she became a founding member of art collective Bukjeh – an Arabic word describing a small pack of belongings carried by travellers, including refugees fleeing war-torn regions. The group specialises in community-based projects that blur the line between art and social activism: one of their earliest works was set within a disaster relief tent at Melbourne’s Immigration Museum, where a group of diaspora artists told their stories of the refugee experience and migration; Bukjeh has also collaborated with local organisations to create a number of “toy libraries” across Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank, giving children free access to used toys collected from all over Palestine.
Collaboration is also at the heart of one of Tayah’s most recent works: a 10-metre fabric banner of a watermelon – the fruit has become a symbol of solidarity with Palestine, in the same colours as the national flag – that has featured at the rallies held every Sunday in Melbourne. The banner was sewn with other mothers at her daughter’s school, with each watermelon seed made by a child to represent a hope planted for the future.
The large scale of the watermelon banner – and Tayah’s similarly oversized keffiyeh banner, which has joined the rallies more recently – is essential to its meaning, she says. After a lifetime spent watching the Palestinian experience erased, Tayah wants “to be seen, to make art that is big and visible” and that shows the tenacity of Palestinian identity.
“I make my work first for my daughter and then every other child,” Tayah says. “I’m not wasting time and energy on those who don’t care. I’m trusting those who believe in a better future.”
A’amar runs at Riverside theatre in Parramatta from 25-28 January as part of Sydney festival. Bukjeh’s Untold Palestine event takes place on 31 January and 1 February at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Haymarket, Sydney
