Seeds of resistance 2024 – 15 pieces – Fatima Killeen (Arabic text -“They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds”)
A recent exhibition by Fatima Killeen held at ANCA Gallery in Canberra attracted considerable interest and was widely acclaimed in art reviews. The timing and the theme of the exhibition coincided with the escalation of war in the Middle East, engaging visitors in a visually emotive and intense portrayal of the humanitarian condition affecting our world.
Western nations have always created industries for the benefit of their own economies, using harmful chemicals to grow toxic produce and investing in the production of catastrophic weapons, in addition to dumping piles of fast fashion throwaways into the landfill of developing countries in the name of international aid relief, thus creating an environmental devastation by leaving behind damaged soil and waterways as well as divided communities.
Most of these communities are engulfed in civil violence and left on their own to bear the brunt of war. They have no basic human rights, and they are the ones who suffer the massive effects of climate change. From the western point-of-view, this is the price of progress.
The on-going campaigns of green washing manipulate people to make more profits and stand in the way of any realistic resolve to adapt to the climate crises, nature to them is a source to be exploited.
Most of the work in the exhibition feature a pomegranate, a sacred fruit and a symbol of life. However, from within its core, a grenade is emerging as the looming danger we will face following the deprivation of our duties to care for the environment.
We are what we grow 2023 – Fatima Killeen
The massive scale of the aggression levelling Gaza is of earthquake proportions, including the outlawed phosphorus bombings. Gaza has sadly become the testing ground for the paraphernalia of modern warfare and a contaminated military landfill, purely to profit from an engineered war.
The elongated terror inflicted on Gaza and the West Bank, enabled by the unwavering American support, has exposed the deliberate targeting of civilians, especially children by Israeli forces. Thousands of civilians have been killed, and many are still under piles of rubble of the relentless bombardments.
Decades long of illegal occupation, the ongoing blockade, starvation, daily military raids on homes, imprisonment of children and the spread of checkpoints armed with remote-controlled guns directed at Palestinians. Targeting children is a war crime. Israel and its close allies should be held accountable for their joint war crimes and violations of human rights.
Nature is our only hope. It is the principal beginning and the ultimate return, it is the source of our existence, refuge and shelter. We are trusted to keep nature safe and unsoiled. We are nature’s custodians as it will show our actions and deeds for when we will hand it over to the next generation, as nature will always remember.
In his review, Sasha Grishin wrote “This is a powerful exhibition that celebrates a people who have endured so much and yet have survived and are determined to survive.”
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