Literature

Mi’ar, 2023 Charcoal on paper, 100 × 70 cm

In Mi’ar, the Palestinian artist Samah Shihadi depicts thickets of sabra cactus growing beneath tall pines and cypresses, with a dry stone wall at the edge of a grassy slope in dappled light. Mi’ar, in the western Galilee, is the village where the artist’s family lived before it was destroyed in 1948, its residents displaced to neighbouring villages. The scene appears peaceful, almost pastoral, yet the cacti and the stone wall are among the few traces of the village’s former life. Rendered in charcoal with hyperrealist precision, the drawing exemplifies the tension between beauty and loss that characterises Shihadi’s depictions of the land.