Sondos Hamadneh

Every time I see my father taking care of the olive tree, I would feel him moving between her branches, as if it was her new season, and her recurring moment of birth. As he touches her fruits with his bare hands, I become more certain that there are deep and emotional connections growing in the place.

Through this experience, I try to explore the act of colonial domination and how it spreads its threads in the natural landscape, stretching to leave its mark on our emotions and collective memory. Here, I seek to express the suffering of the human being in Palestine who is emotionally connected to its fields and gardens, this suffering is manifested when the colonial machine of destruction distorts and erases the image of the place, especially in my memory, reflecting the relentless attempts by settler colonialism to break the will, generalize loss, and stop all forms of life.

The place, in this context, forms our living memory, and hides our secrets in the village's gardens, as every stone, twig, mound of dirt, is part of an intimate fabric that shapes our emotions. And so, I wonder how can I ignore the absence of this emotion from my being, as if it were fading into an unknown horizon? What does it mean to lose these fabrics that constitute the depth of my existence?

Oil on Canvas 60x60 cm.