The Traveling Scarf and Other Stories

"Dear Chairman, dear friends, thank you for your warm friendship and solidarity. We are continuing to work in spite of the hard situation, which is becoming our daily life."

So wrote Mona Saudi (b. 1945), Jordanian sculptor and founding director of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Plastic Arts Section, in a letter from Beirut to Thorstein Rittun, director of Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo (1978–83) in June 1981. The letter was one of many exchanged regarding the organisation of the large group exhibition Palestinske kunstnere (Palestinian Artists) at Kunstnernes Hus, which opened in November 1981. The exhibition included some fifteen artists and nearly 100 works, all of which were for sale in support of the artists and the Palestinian cause. There were also plans to open a fund during the exhibition for donations ‘for establishing a Palestinian Museum’ (Letter from Mona Saudi to Torstein Rittun 28 July 1981, co-signed by Vesla Lange-Nielsen). The exhibition continued to Kristiansand, where it opened at the Christianssands Kunstforening on 17 January the following year.

The exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus was conceived by Mona Saudi as part of a series of initiatives by the Plastic Arts Section of the PLO to activate art and the exhibition format as a means of providing a Palestinian perspective and catalysing international solidarity in their struggle for statehood and human rights. Earlier initiatives, as recounted by Saudi in letters to Kunstnernes Hus, included exhibitions of Palestinian Resistance in Tehran (1977), the International Art Exhibition for Palestine in Beirut (1978), an exhibition in Tokyo for Palestinian artists, which was joined by 300 Japanese artists expressing solidarity (1978), an exhibition of Palestinian posters in Beirut (1979), and exhibitions for Palestinian artists in the Oriental Museum of Moscow (1979), among others.

For the exhibition Actions of Art and Solidarity at Kunstnernes Hus, OCA commissioned Toufoul Abou-Hodeib (b. 1975), Lebanese-Palestinian scholar and Associate Professor of History at the University of Oslo, to pair her ongoing research with a deeper investigation into the historic display of Palestinian art within the very walls of the present exhibition. Who were the personalities, in Norway, Beirut and further afield, who made the exhibition happen? What were their motivations? What were the networks of Palestinian solidarity that pre-existed and deepened around this event? How did friendships establish crucial links in these networks? And what made Kunstnernes Hus such a receptive partner in disseminating solidarity for Palestinian artists?

Abou-Hodeib conducted new interviews with Mona Saudi in Beirut, participating artist Samia Halaby in New York and activists and members of the Norwegian Palestine Committee Ebba Wegeland and Eldbjørg Holte in Oslo. The result is three short films that assemble previously unpublished perspectives on the Oslo event, across different geographical and socio-political contexts, and bring together complimentary material from the Kunstnernes Hus archive held by Norway’s National Museum Documents Archive (Dokumentasjonsarkivet/NMFK/KH/Dba/L0008).