Understorey: Palestinian Threads

What does it mean to belong to country?  Understorey joins the opening of an art exhibition in Midland on International Women’s Day, 2020; and the theme, Palestinian Threads and Stitches: A Tapestry of Home and Diaspora, takes us further back, to 1948, to the Naqba, the Palestinian exodus.  Seven hundred thousand Palestinian Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, fled or were expelled from their homes, most never to return. And we can look further back, to 1829, the time of European invasion, which began the dispossession of Aboriginal people from their land, often ending a relationship with country that had gone back tens of thousands of years.  Two groups, made stateless: diaspora Palestinians, and Aboriginal people, both grappling in different ways to find their identities, and making their own adjustments, to life as they had known it.  Featuring Noongar Elder, Uncle Ben Taylor, Palestinian Association chair, Samya Jabbour, former MP Melissa Parke, who worked in Gaza with the United Nations (2002-2004), creative writing facilitator Samiha Olwan, and MC Hiba El-Farra. (At Midland Junction Arts Centre until 11 April).

(Photo: Samya Jabbour, Palestinian tatreez; by A. Glamorgan)