Footage shows Palestinians finding ways to cross the Israeli separation wall that cuts across the West Bank, for reasons as quotidian as attending school. Jarrar himself is no stranger to these daily feats. When planning to attend an interview at the American consulate in Jerusalem for his us visa application in , he learned that Israeli authorities had cancelled most permits due to the ongoing war on Gaza, so he smuggled himself in.
Things blew up again in β the year Jarrar accompanied a Palestinian family on their gruelling journey from Syria to Germany, recorded in his remarkable documentary, Notes on Displacement β when the artist painted a giant rainbow flag on the West Bank separation wall near the Qalandiya checkpoint Through the Spectrum , In the aftermath, Jarrar continued to pop up in the news cycle.
Making use of his military training, the artist created abstract paintings by firing an AR assault rifle at vials of paint positioned between two canvases angled towards each other. Video documentation of that iteration shows Jarrar introducing the performance in Arabic before grabbing his Glock, as if to challenge his European audience to resist the urge to see an Arab holding a gun as a terrorist. After something of a media lull, Jarrar rode the NFT wave in He minted a token based on a jar of dirt picked up in a village near Ramallah from which the illegal Halamish settlement could be seen: a response to the forced and illegal evictions of Palestinians from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah by settlers supported by the Israeli army.
When his proposal to collaborate with the French postal office was rejected that same year, Jarrar decided to create his own stamps and sold them for 75 cents with Galerie Polaris at the FIAC art fair in Paris. The State of Palestine icon has since become an enduring symbol. Jarrar sold those magnets himself as part of a group exhibition at Timespan in Scotland, to raise funds for the nonprofit Disarming Design for Palestine.
For that show, he also produced Palestine Sunbird , a lifesize bronze sculpture of a sunbird, perched on a granite block commonly used for gravestones. Palestine Sunbird is both monument and memorial. Much has changed for Palestine and the artist, after all. He purchased the plot in with money he made selling sculptures of everyday objects β including a football, Jerusalem bread and an olive tree trunk β cast from concrete chiselled off the Israeli separation wall.
