Work In Progress: Illegal Colours
In 1980, Israel introduced a ban on ‘politically significant’ artworks that contained the colours black, green, red, and white, which just happened to be the colours of the Palestinian flag.
This act of censorship gave rise to the watermelon as a symbol of Palestine, since it is impossible to paint a watermelon without those four colours.
The absurdity of restricting an artist’s palette in this way became the starting point for my ongoing series Illegal Colours. The first work responded directly to the ban, but the idea of illegal colours has stayed with me, and I’ve continued exploring colour, not just for how it looks, but for what it represents.
Algeria was the first country in the Middle East to ban rainbow-coloured items, but that censorship has since spread around neighbouring countries. Like the watermelon, rainbows occupy a dual existence: a natural occurrence, yet also a powerful cultural emblem. Since the 1970s it has been central to LGBTQIA+ identity through the pride flag, but it’s also an elemental phenomenon — light refracted through water. The fact that rainbow imagery has been censored in several countries underlines the impossibility of controlling colour and raises questions about how meaning is assigned to visual forms.
Are they going to censor the sky?
Lately I’ve been experimenting with the colours of the rainbow using different mediums and materials.
One piece is developing into a large abstract painting that connects back to my earlier watermelon work. At the same time, I’ve been drawn to working with paper on wood, cutting and layering shapes.
There’s something in that process, the way colours, textures and forms overlap, that speaks to symbolism — how anything can be assigned meaning. But is that meaning always shared? If someone doesn’t recognise the reference, does the symbol still mean anything, or does it lose its power?