Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
The gentle young man Hani Abbas visited me for the first time when he was at the end of high school, and he had ten caricatures as examples of his work for his first start. The Palestinian painter Hani Abbas was born in the Yarmouk Camp in 1977, and comes from the village of Saffuriyya, in the district of the Galilean Palestinian city of Nazareth.
He grew up in Hanaya and Zuarib, Yarmouk Camp, specifically on Safad Street. In 1998, he began drawing political cartoons, and in the same year he published his first drawing in the Palestinian Al-Hadaf magazine. After that, the painter Hani Abbas relied on holding individual exhibitions in cultural centers and university colleges.
What is noteworthy is that his drawings reflect Palestinian concerns on the political or social level. Hani Abbas pointed out in his interview with journalist Fayez Abu Eid, which was published on the Refugee Net website, that “the real and honest moments in our lives are the moments of sadness and tragedies... and we as Palestinians have taken the largest share of worry and sadness in our lives... in addition to that we have inherited the memory of our ancestors.” Which constitutes additional momentum... This daily suffering contributes directly to formulating the concept of creating creative space in the Palestinian personality, and in all fields... not just art... and because art
is the most clear and widespread form... we find the imprints of the Palestinian tragedy clearly visible in every... A work of art...what gives it greater sincerity and depth.”
In answering journalist Abu Eid’s question: Can you describe to us how you felt when you were forced to leave Yarmouk camp and how was that reflected in your paintings? Did the manifestations of the Syrian crisis make you cross red lines that you had set for yourself? The creative painter Hani Abbas replied, saying: “It is a feeling that I cannot describe, and describe, something like uprooting a tree from the dirt and throwing it into a burning stove. During my time in the camp under bombardment, which lasted about five months, my drawings tended towards challenge and steadfastness.. After we were displaced from the camp, the drawings began to tend towards the new crisis of displacement and homelessness. You can notice this from the chronology of the drawings I have... We are going through successive and complex crises that I am trying to document artistically.”
And about the frequent repetition of children’s characters in his works, and about the delinquent childhood, what impact it left on his drawings? Abbas said: “Children are the group most affected by wars. The purity that is exposed to all this cruelty. Drawing with the eyes of a child gives you a simple and clear vision of what is going on. We have lost many of our children and many of them have been displaced as well. I always feel their wound that they have not yet understood. It is the wound.” "Which will leave a clear impact on their future and the future of several generations of our people. Notice the innocence of the child as he looks at a plane that might drop missiles at him seconds later."
Abbas stressed that the art of caricature “is originally an art of resistance, and with the modern communications revolution it has become necessary to exploit this revolution in the messages that we want to deliver to the world in an easier and faster way, and we all know that the image is more influential than the word and the idea is more influential than the image. Our cause was just and it was Previously, it lacked proper access to the world, but now no one can prevent the flow of information and images via the Internet, so we must invest in that well. As for me, social media was one of the most important channels through which I was able to communicate my work and idea, without the need for the media. “Traditional newspapers, such as newspapers and television, which I consider to have a limited space for publication and spread and which are controlled by framed mentalities. The concept of freedom is a well-established concept here in communicating your ideas alone. A poem creates a revolution. War cannot be stopped by a poem.”
The true measure of the success of a caricature - according to the painter Hani Abbas - is the extent of its influence, whether with words or without words. It depends on the culture of the society to which the caricature is directed, and the nature of the caricature’s ability to speak. Hani very rarely writes in caricatures, unless the need arises. . The important thing is to get his message across. There are many Palestinian symbols whose stars have shone over the past three decades in the field of caricature art, most prominent among them are Umayyah Juha and Hani Abbas, to complement the approach of the martyr Naji Al-Ali. Resistance to the Zionist occupation through the brush of an artist.
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Achievements and Awards
He won the International Press Freedom Illustrator Award in Geneva. He has been living in Geneva since 2014 after being forcibly displaced from Yarmouk camp in 2012. He started drawing regularly early in his life, and then his drawing skills developed on his own and he participated in exhibitions organized by the United Nations.
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- Years in active
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