Nuno da Luz: Airs
For his solo exhibition Airs at Galeria Vera Cortês, Portuguese artist Nuno da Luz works with highly reduced audiovisual media, where this reduction of means leads to an intensification of their symbolic meaning. However, the exhibition can be discussed within a broader framework than the purely work-immanent one, which revolves around the question of representation and the directing of attention. Since this exhibition is also about Palestine, it is precisely this "also" that I would like to address. Moreover, it is an exhibition that makes me reflect on hope, its sustenance and continuation, and our role in such an effort.. But let's start from the beginning.
Upon entering the exhibition Airs, there is a very loud noise—a noise disturbing because of its volume, yet bearable due to its character. It consists of several tonalities merged into one, flooding the room. Orientation feels difficult, as other sensory perceptions are almost drowned out, making it necessary to first understand the source of the sound to make sense of it all.
The origin is a small children's organ on the floor, with a stone pressing an octave from G to F, producing an airstream that releases this sound.
The visual aspect of the show consists of six flagpoles emerging from the walls of Galeria Vera Cortês. The flags hanging from them are not those of a nation but are made of rescue blankets—one side gold, the other silver. On each of these flags is a poem written in black acrylic: on the golden side, in the original language the artist encountered them; on the silver side, in Portuguese translation. There are six different poems, each by a Palestinian writer living in the diaspora.
Zaina Alsous, Dareen Tatour, Fady Joudah, Fadwa Tuqan, Mosab Abu Toha, and Naomi Shihab Nye. Da Luz dedicated a Sunbird to each of them.
Sunbirds is the name the artist gave to this series. The Sunbird, one of Palestine's national symbols, stands for resilience and, above all, the hope of freedom.[1] Each flag is devoted to each of these authors, whose poems also speak of birds and their song, resonating through the air, even when drowned out by the sounds of drones or breaking the silence; they keep on singing.
Then suddenly, silence breaks over the exhibition space—the organ stops. The silence takes over and amplifies the soft crackling of the moving flags, which is now the only sound that can be heard. This silence, initially a relief, grows louder with each passing second until it becomes almost as intense as the previous noise—perhaps even more so.
Da Luz plays with a sense of representational presence, but his work, in fact, draws strength from the contrasted absent—from what cannot be seen, touched, or heard but is nonetheless present in the air(s).
This subtle interplay of presence and absence enhances the artistic expression in the exhibition but also presents challenges in the overall context of the show and how its attention is distributed. After all, attention is a scarce commodity, available only to a certain extent, and its allocation is therefore all the more important—especially when it comes to Palestine. Especially now.
The fact that Da Luz, a Portuguese artist, offers Palestine a platform in an artistic institution like Galeria Vera Cortês is a good thing, as this has been particularly rare in Western (art) institutions in recent months. However, one cannot ignore that this is a representation of an identity outside of his own, and great caution must be exercised. Even though Da Luz presents the six Palestinian authors through their own words, the exhibition’s contextualisation, especially the curatorial text by Carolina Jiménez—while well-written—shifts the focus to the artistic interpretation of this representation. If you create an exhibition about Palestine, then make it about Palestine. Otherwise, you risk turning the very identity you aim to represent into a medium for your own artistic expression.
So, let's turn our attention back to Palestine. To the settler-colonial history of the state of Israel. To the genocide perpetrated by Netanyahu and his extremist government, to the at least 49,000 Palestinians who have been killed to date, to the even more who have been wounded, and to those who are still alive, those who are resilient, who have hope.
The exhibition has something very valuable to offer here: by using the symbol of the national flag in the form of rescue blankets, the poems of Palestinian authors living in the diaspora, and the title of this series being Sunbirds, Da Luz not only illustrates the current emergency situation of these people but also links it to their history of displacement, while simultaneously highlighting their resilience and hope.
The Palestinian Sunbird symbolises not only hope in general but hope in relation to a place—a geography, a habitat. Hope may be a universally transferable feeling, but a hope that is to be decolonial, as in the case of Palestine, is bound to a place—a land, a homeland. Place matters, land matters—especially in a colonial history. The land is the basis of human interaction and shapes our identity in ways that are inextricably linked to it. And although the most urgent hope is for a ceasefire, allowing Palestinians to escape the war zone in Gaza to safety, the long-term hope, on the contrary, is tied to their freedom and to the ability of Palestinians to choose to remain in this very place.
The concept of the geographies of hope[2] that I’m referring to here contrasts with a utopian understanding of hope that is placeless. It frames hope within the context of six dimensions: place, alliance, the unthinkable, perseverance, resilience, and the (im)possible.
The place is a ground underfoot, a starting point for the formulation of hope, and for Palestine, it is also where this hope culminates.
Hope nourishes decolonial alliances against the colonial norm within and beyond geographies. They can encourage people to understand themselves and their lives differently, drawing from a posicionality that moves them from the periphery to their own centre.
The unthinkable dimension exists in the realm of collective consciousness, envisioning a world "otherwise" by uncovering hidden relations of the past so that the apparently unthinkable becomes thinkable.
Perseverance is the dimension that is oriented towards the temporal aspect of continuing on and moving forward together no matter what,
Perseverance in action becomes resilience. "Saying ‘no’ to harmful laws, processes, and frameworks is a prerequisite to saying ‘yes’ to what is hopeful."[3] Refusal is liberation in a decolonial context. Yet, this refusal must be founded on a possibility to move towards alternative relationalities.
This leads to the (im)possible dimension, which encompasses all the others and turns them into action. This realm of hope is committed to anti-colonial, anti-racist, and just politics through praxis: building relationships with each other and the world on the basis of these politics, and producing and communicating knowledge about these relationships.
So when we talk about hope for Palestine from a Western context, the short-term hope is urgent and forceful, aiming to achieve a ceasefire—hope for the Palestinian people. Long-term hope, however, requires persistence and sustained attention because it is a holistic hope that must dismantle the colonial system and its narratives that have been constructed for over a hundred years—from within and from without. It is about the Palestinian people, but even more about their living conditions, which include the Palestinian land, environment, and nature, as well as their ability to form their identity in proximity to their living world. This hope asks us, too, to engage—to confront and challenge the colonialist structures we grew up in so that we can dismantle them as well. This means listening to the Palestinians—their stories of the past, their realities of the present, and their dreams for the future. Hope may be in the Air(s), but it must materialise on the ground and be put into action within each of us.
Valerie Rath is an Austrian cultural producer and curator with an academic background in art history and art and cultural management. She is currently living in Lisbon. Since April 2024 she is working as an in-house Curator for DUPLEX_AIR. Her curatorial practice is driven by a deep curiosity about the influence of past narratives on our collective and individual abilities to imagine future worlds — and how artistic interventions can expand that imagination.
Proofreading: Diogo Montenegro.
Nuno da Luz, Airs. Exhibition views at Galeria Vera Cortês, Lisbon, 2024. Photos: Bruno Lopes. Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Vera Cortês.
Notes:
[1] It was declared the national bird of Palestine in 2015 when Israel first tried to rename the species, though unsuccessfully.
[2] Hazlewood, J. A., Middleton Manning, B. R., & Casolo, J. J. (2023). Geographies of Hope-in-Praxis: Collaboratively decolonizing relations and regenerating relational spaces. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 6(3), 1417-1446. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486231191473
[3] Daigle M, Ramírez MM (2018) Decolonial geographies. Antipode: 1–7. Available at: http://depts.washington.edu/relpov/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/DaigleRamirez2019.pdf (accessed 27 July 2024).