IN CONVERSATION WITH
What did exist were popular cultural associations— embroidery cooperatives, folklore centers, small shops in Jerusalem and Ramallah that preserved Palestinian craft traditions. Artists would be called in not as artists but as interior decorators, asked to help display objects beautifully.
In 1994, Mansour co-founded the Al-Wasiti Art Center in Jerusalem— a formal attempt to create an institution that could bridge Palestinian artists at home with those in exile, and archive the art being produced under occupation. The center took its name from Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti, the 13th-century Arab illustrator whose illuminated manuscripts represent one of the great achievements of Arab visual culture. The name itself was a statement: Palestinian art had deep roots, and those roots demanded institutional care.
ON THE WINGS OF AN ANGEL: ART AS LIVING ARCHIVE
Among Mansour’ s most recent major works is On the Wings of an Angel, one of four large paintings now housed in the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit— a work created to mark thirty years of the New Visions collective, alongside Nabil Anani, Tayseer Barakat, and Vera Tamari. It is made in mud, by choice.
The painting depicts East Jerusalem— specifically the city as seen from within the ancient walls. Each of the four artists rendered Jerusalem according to their own vision.“ What do I want viewers to feel?” Mansour pauses.“ I wanted people to contemplate it. The question of Jerusalem is an important one— I chose to paint something about Jerusalem, to bring it into the room.”
This is what Mansour’ s entire practice has always done: bring the question of Palestine“ into the room”— into galleries in Houston and Paris, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, into the collections of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, into the programs of the Institut du monde arabe. And always with the same fundamental purpose: to make the invisible visible, to insist on the existence of what others have worked to deny.
2020, A wild Flower from the Galile
MUSEUMS, BELONGING, AND THE GENERATION THAT COMES NEXT
When I ask Mansour about the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit— now one of the region’ s most ambitious cultural institutions— he is measured but hopeful.“ Every Palestinian Museum conveys the message of belonging to some degree,” he says.“ That is its primary purpose.”
What matters most to Mansour in a museum is its function: a permanent collection that becomes education, that creates a bridge between past and future, that explains to young people what they are looking at and why it matters.“ The existence of a museum liberates the artist from the constraint of size,” he says, recalling how, during the occupation, canvases had to be small enough to smuggle in a car trunk.“ With a museum, you can do what you want. Galleries alone are not enough.”
When I ask whether he is worried about Palestinian youth and their relationship to identity, his answer is both honest and moving.“ Palestinian youth want to endure. They want to stay.” He pauses.“ My grandson— seven years old— created a Facebook group and called it‘ Blood of the Martyrs.’ That tells you how even the youngest generation engages with these issues. With force.”
A MESSAGE TO ARAB MUSEUMS
Arab museums are being built and expanded at unprecedented pace— in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Qatar, Lebanon, and across the region. I ask Mansour what he would say to the directors and cultural leaders shaping these institutions.
His answer is rooted in his own experience of institutional absence.“ A good museum needs a permanent collection and programs that explain to young people what they are seeing— a bridge between past and future. That is the fundamental need.” He speaks warmly of the Sharjah museums as among the Arab institutions he admires most:“ The Al Qasimi family are cultured, humble, and genuinely committed to cultural stewardship. They have continued their path, as the UAE changed, Sharjah remained authentic.”
He sees in Sharjah’ s cultural model something that resonates with his own experience: communities working to preserve distinctive identities in rapidly changing contexts.“ I think they share similar challenges— like the Palestinians. They are committed to maintaining cultural authenticity. If you want to experience cultural continuity in the Arab world today, Sharjah offers a compelling example. They have preserved what many places have transformed.”
THE HUMBLE PERSISTENCE OF A LIFE’ S WORK
Near the end of our conversation, I ask Mansour whether he ever imagined— when he was teaching students, organizing artists in the occupied territories, or painting small canvases that could be hidden in car trunks— that his work would one day be featured in the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
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