Literature

Patience (Sabre Series), 2019 Charcoal on paper, 100 × 70 cm

In Patience, from the Sabre Series, the Palestinian artist Samah Shihadi depicts a sabra cactus rising from a dry stone wall beside a large boulder. The title draws on the Arabic word sabr, which names both the prickly pear and patience, a double meaning that has made the plant a central emblem of Palestinian steadfastness and attachment to the land. In Shihadi’s work the sabra also marks the borders of destroyed Palestinian villages, a motif she shares with the painter Asim Abu-Shakra, who was fascinated by the cactus’s capacity to flower out of thorny death. Rendered in charcoal with hyperrealist precision, the drawing presents stone and plant as equally enduring.