Over close to three decades, Said Abu Shakra’s Umm al-Fahm Art Gallery has gained international acclaim as a place of intersection and dialogue between Arab and Jewish art. For Umm al-Fahm’s residents, the cultural and educational institution is a place where they can attend art classes, and potentially gain more financial independence.
Umm al-Fahm, the third-largest Arab city in Israel, sits by the border of the West Bank amid a collection of Arab Israeli towns known as the Triangle.
We meet on a sweltering afternoon at the beginning of July in the gallery Abu Shakra opened in 1996, which can be found in the middle of a steep rise in one of Umm el-Fahm’s narrow streets. I park, pull hard on the hand brake, and enter a building whose facade is old and neglected and whose interior is a gem. Said greets me excitedly.
We speak amid the arrival of congratulatory phone calls and colorful bouquets: The Umm al-Fahm Art Gallery was officially recognized by Israel as a museum earlier this month, making it the first Israeli museum of Arab art since the state’s founding.
Said Abu Shakra was born in Umm al-Fahm in 1956. An artist from a family of artists, Said is married to Siham, a teacher, and is a father of five. He has won four lifetime awards, including the French government’s Order of Arts and Letters.
“I want dialogue that isn’t built on fighting but on recognition and curiosity. Breed partnership. Make it valuable,” Said told The Times of Israel about his hopes for the gallery.
It took almost two years after the former Bennett-Lapid government proposed opening the first museum of Arab culture in Israel for the Culture Ministry to choose the Umm al-Fahm gallery — nearly 30 years after its opening. Aside from recognition for its decades of cultural significance to the Arab community, the state’s sponsorship means the gallery will now receive state funding to help support its operations.
Also recognized this month as one of the most important Arab cultural institutions in Israel was the Sard Theater in Haifa, which stages plays exclusively in Arabic. The theater, which was previously called the Al Midan Theater, closed down in 2021 after losing state funding over a controversial play based on the life story of terrorist Walid Daqqa, who was part of a cell that abducted, tortured and killed IDF soldier Moshe Tamam. The theater reopened under its new name in 2022.
Over the years, Abu Shakra has faced heavy skepticism over his dreams for the museum, but he did not let that deter him from providing a home for Palestinian culture and making it accessible to the world.
“I choose to be the man who turns on a light for those who are scared of the dark,” he said.
The Times of Israel sat down with Abu Shakra to ask him about the people who inspired him, his dual identity as an Israeli-Palestinian man, and the work he does in the art world to try and bridge between Arabs and Jews.
The Times of Israel: How are you?
Said Abu Shakra: That’s a question that is sometimes skated over, but you are surely looking for a real response. So today, I’m ecstatic at the Israeli government’s recognition of the Umm al-Fahm Art Gallery as a museum. It makes me forget the difficult reality for a moment. Many years have passed since I submitted the request, and I’ve waited for a long time for an official letter and I’d almost lost hope.
Some said that if I opened a museum with backing from the State of Israel, it would harm freedom of art. The content wouldn’t serve the Palestinian art scene. The Palestinians are concerned that an Arab museum in Israel would become a fig leaf, and the Jews are worried that it will become a subversive institution, a pipeline for exhibiting nationalistic content. Both sides are scared.
I choose to be the man who turns on a light for those who are scared of the dark. I want to turn the light on and say no to fear and focus on my narrative. My pain.
Does an Arab artist have the right to draw “just” a bird, olive tree, or cactus without people saying it’s too political or not political enough?
Until the Oslo Accords in 1993 [the agreement that facilitated the formation of the Palestinian Authority], everyone worked in a space where there was an expectation to include Palestinian pain in art, and the vast majority of artists focused on that. After Oslo, they thought we could be free now. Now there is a Palestinian president so no need to push to enlist art for the sake of the narrative. However, in the State of Israel, the situation is a little different.
Most artists focus on politics with tools they gained in Israeli academia. No one draws dead children or a refugee camp because it’s too direct, and political art is soft and indirect. But there are also more extreme works like Sharif Waked, a video artist who exhibited his work in the Israel Museum and other places around the world, and some of his works are also exhibited in the Umm al-Fahm Art Gallery in memory of the late artist Sheikh Walid Abu Shakra.
We’re talking about Walid, your eldest brother who died in 2019 at the age of 73. He was one of the biggest Palestinian artists who worked here and around the world.
Walid was born and raised in Umm al-Fahm. He was 11 years older than me and one of the first Arab artists who studied art in Israel, at the Avni Institute. We were born to the same mother, and later, our father married another woman and had children with her too. Walid married an English woman, moved to England, and, at some point, became a Sufi whose focus was on the spiritual part of the religion.
When the economic situation at home got difficult, Walid helped provide for the family. He was 16 and until then, he was an outstanding student in a Jewish high school in Afula. He and another brother of mine, Farid Abu Shakra, who will become our museum’s head curator, were some of the only Arabs who attended that school.
At first, Walid found work in a bakery in Tel Aviv and would sleep in stairwells. After that, he worked for the municipal property tax offices in Hadera because he knew how to read and write in Hebrew and Arabic. He rented a room from Efraim and Chaya Kochuk, a Holocaust survivor couple.
During one of his visits to Israel ahead of an exhibition in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, a reporter asked him to recall a defining moment in his life and he replied, “When Efraim would enter my room in the dead of night on tiptoe, to lay an extra blanket on me.” When Efraim saw Walid’s sketches, he took him to an art class in Hadera.
When he would come home, Walid would bring our mother a poppy seed cake and flowers. Until then, we hadn’t tasted poppy seed cake. He brought with him the possibility of another life. A culture we didn’t know. I would wait for him with butterflies in my tummy. I was scared that something would happen to him, that he would die, or abandon me. When he got sick, I flew to England to say goodbye. When he died, I went back to Umm al-Fahm, mourned him, and two weeks later, I returned to bring his spirit back here.
What does it mean to bring his spirit back?
I brought back all his paintings and photographs and many of his letters. Rummaging through his collection allowed me to once again, if only for a moment, relive the family I had before everyone died. I found close to 10,000 photographs that Walid took of Umm al-Fahm and also brought back the traditional Sufi clothes he used to wear, which are permanently displayed in the gallery.
Your mother also had a special influence on him.
Mom’s world was full of spirituality and light despite her life story. She lost her mother at the age of five and her father, Imam Yusuf Jabarin, who was born in Umm al-Fahm in 1890, married another woman who abused her. At the age of 11, she was married to my father who was much older than her. By the age of 29, she already had seven children.
We didn’t have electricity in our house, and I remember when it was cold, she would put us to bed pressed together side by side, turn off the kerosene burner, and lie down next to us. During the night, her hand would feel around to check who was covered and who wasn’t. She would hug us, sing us songs, and read passages from the Quran. At times when there wasn’t anything to eat, her embrace had meaning.
We had a happy childhood with lots of love, but as a child, I also experienced fear and was aware of life’s hardships. One day, Mom wanted to visit her brother and recharge a little. Then, a woman was not allowed to walk around outside alone at night and had to be accompanied by a man. I, a seven-year-old boy, was that man.
I remember that it was dark, rainy, and muddy. There were no roads. We took a stick, tied rags to the end, dipped it in gasoline, and made a torch. I’m holding the torch and showing the way for my mom, and in my heart, I’m scared to death. I was scared of the hyena from children’s stories and of the girl with Down syndrome who lived nearby who I thought was a monster. I didn’t tell my mom I was scared. I had a job to get her to safety.
Could you say, in retrospect, that this torch foreshadowed the way you blazed a trail in the art world?
Showing someone else the way is a responsibility because you are also in danger. You need to keep going, not hesitate. I may have been the one holding the torch for Mom, but without a doubt, she was the torch to me.
Mom never complained or cast blame. About everything, good or bad, she would say, “This is a gift from God. We need to be patient, believe in good, and do good.”
About a year ago, your autobiographical work, “Maryam,” was published by Schocken. You dedicated it to your mother.
When Mom knew she was going to die, she asked me to come to see her and said, “I want to tell you a few things.” I thought she would say, “Look after your children and your siblings, here, I have some gold, share it.” But she looked me in the eyes, swaying, and said, “Everyone has people who hate them, enemies, and people who envy them. That’s life. Embrace your enemies because if you keep fighting them, you’ll have enemies for another 200 years. Instead of winning or waiting for revenge, you must develop respect and partnership.”
So I shared my personal story and through it, I tried to connect. I want dialogue that isn’t built on fighting but on recognition and curiosity. Don’t strive to leave others weak so you can be king. Breed partnership. Make it valuable.
I think it’s a little hard for all of us to talk about partnership right now.
That’s true. I’ve lived here since birth, and I’m still waiting for a moment of quiet. The events of October 7 distanced people from me who accused me of choosing to sit quietly. And if I choose to sit quietly, does that mean I support [the attack]? That I’m happy about what happened? Absolutely not. Maybe I’m in a more complex situation?
No one likes my double identity, Palestinian and Israeli. But I think that identity helps me be a bridge. To present the cultural roots I was raised on. I was born here, my forefathers were born here, I’m not just another man who occupied land. I’m not looking for vengeance. I want to be seen as a partner.
As far as you are concerned, was opening the gallery a move aimed at partnership or separation?
I grew up hungry and poor, but I had a home, a family, culture, and love. I don’t remember the things I lacked because the embrace of all that was bigger than them. Maybe because of it, I refuse to be a victim. I refuse to be a man for whom self-sacrifice is his tenet. My father always said that when you cast blame, three fingers are still pointed at you. Check where your part in it is.
At 27, I finished studying art at the Avni Institute. When I wanted to exhibit my work, I didn’t have anywhere to do it. My cousin, the artist Asim Abu Shakra, who died at 29, got a posthumous exhibition in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
I went there and felt my heart clench. Why did I need to wait for a museum to (maybe) display my art after my death? I decided to raise a torch. I realized that if I was not part of the solution, I would be part of the problem.
Is that the reason why you and Farid opened the gallery?
I realized that there was no Arab culture in Israel because the state prefers to forget us. I wanted to cast blame and found myself with three fingers pointed at me. Why didn’t we create cultural leadership? Why did we wait? Okay, the state hasn’t done enough, but where are we?
I decided I didn’t want to be a victim. I wanted to do something to promote my culture. I don’t want to wait for anyone and don’t want a partnership based on solutions. I want people to know I’m good even if my opinions differ from theirs.
And where does your art fit in within the museum’s activity?
When I opened the gallery, I realized I had to make myself available for it alone, so I put my art aside. I made that decision completely and without regret because the gallery fully satisfied me and pulled me into it.
We provided a stage for Palestinian, Jewish and international artists, published art books of Palestinian artists, and held gallery meetings. It was important to us that the gallery not remain a hidden gem, but be a meeting point that everyone would feel they had a place in.
Over the years, my wife, Siham, encouraged me to go up to my studio and paint. I displayed exhibitions in Israel and abroad and managed the gallery, and during COVID-19, everything stopped. No one came. I went up to the studio and was lost. I couldn’t paint even a line or a stain. After two months of fruitless attempts, an unprecedented creative eruption burst out of me.
It was important to us that the gallery not remain a hidden gem, but be a meeting point that everyone would feel they had a place in.
At the same time, I was focused on writing my autobiography. I would meet with the editor Anat Sheinkman-Ben Ze’ev, and after every meeting, I felt like I’d been through a grueling journey where I opened all the dark rooms. Sometimes I would find myself sitting down to cry, going to sleep, and then going to the studio to paint.
I included metaphors in the book that I created following those conversations. That was when my creativity was most active. For the first time, Siham almost begged me to come down from the studio after years of pushing me to go up there to paint.
In the book, which was part of my process to say goodbye to my mother, I touched on anxieties and fears, scars and pain. I had the opportunity to look at the journey I’ve been through since I was a boy, on the brink of loss, going to work in Tel Aviv without protection and seeing awful things and criminals.
When I worked for the police, I would go back to those places, this time as a man of law, to see things from a different angle. I didn’t want to be fixed inside my memory. I felt proud of the way I’ve come.
So I’m not crying and I’m not complaining. I have 24 hours in a day, of them I spend eight hours asleep, and the rest I share between the museum and art. Soon, an exhibition of mine will be displayed at the Maya Gallery in Tel Aviv and will include paintings I made following the start of the war.
Tell me about one of the works that will be displayed in the exhibition.
I painted “Hyena” in October of 2023 after the war broke out, and it’s an expression of the fear and intimidation I felt. It’s the moment of truth where the fear is realized. I felt a spiritual collapse. I felt like I wasn’t allowed to express pain and fear and like I needed to satisfy people. I felt that if I’m defined as a lighthouse, I need to supply the goods. But I want to be the independent man I am and express the pain of the split identity.
Did you feel that the work you slaved over for 30 years, not only for art but for partnership, was losing meaning?
I don’t know. I was very upset. Maybe I’m less upset now, but it feels like it will take a long time to rehabilitate what was destroyed, and I’m not sure I have the energy to patch it. This whole bloody cycle tests our activity and threatens to swallow it whole.
And underneath all that, there is no lighthouse and no torch, only a human being. My private pain that only a few are willing to recognize. So I paint a hyena. And that hyena, which comes across a prey, doesn’t leave anything of it. It eats it alive.
Sometimes, I want to be a predator so I can survive. I definitely don’t want to be a pet that gets eaten. But the predator is a symbol of existential fear. Fear of those who behave like hyenas. Those who are hypocritical. People who frequently change their colors.
Ariella Oldfield translated and contributed to this report.
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