EYELESS IN GAZA
Eyeless in Gaza
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Figure 1 Eyeless in Gaza Size 70.5” X 60” ©Roland Salazar Rose
I don’t feel comfortable with the position taken by the Bush administration with respect to Iraq. I have no doubt that Saddam Hussein is a ruthless dictator, and the world will be better off with him out of office and gone. The difficulty I have is while I understand that he has failed to disarm as mandated by the Security Council resolution, and thus must “face serious consequences”, diplomatic language for ‘war’; the fact is that the Iraq people, the same ones we say we will help find their way to freedom, will again be the victims. Victims have long memories, and the Middle East feasts on memories and on myths.
As an artist,
this issue, and the plethora of bias press supporting war, made me engage
in representing what is, in my opinion, the major dilemma that faces us
all at this time. We are blind! I decided to ‘lift’ as a label
for a series of paintings I have recently completed the Aldous Huxley’s
title in Eyeless in Gaza, and to create figurative abstract work—
faces without eyes— placing these images in Gaza; the principal
city in the Gaza Strip.
Huxley’s
central theme in the narrative is the failure of dogmatism. I feel that
dogmatism seems to be the central them presented by the President, and
mouthed by others; it comes over, as the only way is ‘my way’.
While Huxley took the title for his novel from Milton’s poem Samson
Agonistes, Bedford in Aldous Huxley remarks that ‘Eyeless in Gaza’
was the blue print, as it were, of what Aldous set out to discover and
to be’; that is: “the search for knowledge and intelligence,
the true experience of reality, the concern for the present and the future
of mankind.”
Gaza
is said to be a “city of historical and religious importance.”
Gaza came under Israel occupation in 1967. In May 1994 the city became
the headquarters of the new Palestine Authority, which administers Palestinian
areas in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In September 1995 Israel and
the PLO signed a second peace agreement extending the Palestinian Authority
to some other West bank towns. The agreement also established elected
88-member Palestinian Council, which held its inaugural session in Gaza
in March 1996. Gaza today, and since the intifada in 1987, is the center
for political unrest and confrontation between Israelis and Palestinian.
The City is an economic disaster. [Various sources used for this summary
on Gaza]
We
entered the 21st century with hope that at long last a true, honorable,
settlement between Israel and Palestine would finally be realized. Sept
11th brought all eyes to focus on terrorism and then by subterfuge Iraq.
I am not suggesting that the Bush administration is necessarily purposely
misleading the American people. It is, however, blind! And, President
Arafat? Another blind person! My paintings declare that we are 'eyeless'
in Gaza; and one can extend this to being 'eyeless' in Iraq as well. For
we simply can’t get out of the trap we have set for ourselves; witness
the many changes in position taken by the Bush administration on terrorism,
on Iraq, on the Middle East. There is a policy, yes, and it sustains the
policy of blindness. What more can you expect, from either side, all sides,
Israel, Palestine the USA, all when the principal players are blind.
Perhaps,
Gaza, will some day find a solution for its people, composed entirely
of Muslim Palestinian Arabs; swelled after the Arab Israeli war of 1948.
But it will not find it for now, as all attention is focused on the seemingly
imminent threat of a war in Iraq, and a long and tortured occupation by
white, non Arab western, mostly Christian-Jewish— armed to the teeth—
occupiers. There seems to be no way out.
Reviewed
in 2000, Huxley’s Eyeless in Gaza is said to “symbolize the
ferment of the thirties [written in 1936], the opposition between political
extremes (communism/fascism, pacifism/militarism) that was eventually
resolved by war [WW II]” Anthony Beavis is the central character
in the novel and it tells his life story. In the final chapter Beavis
goes to speak at a pacifist meeting in the face of death threats.
It
is not my intention to do political art, rather to convey the sense of
hopelessness—the ‘eyeless’ face of our current times.
Eyeless in Gaza is the name of a British musical group who apparently
also used the title name in Huxley’s book. See Gaza City and other
sources of information on the Middle East.
I guess that I am hoping for a miracle cure for self-induced blindness.
© Roland Salazar Rose 2007