exhibition catalogue 1989 ISBN-87-983320-7 33p. Drawings; text: children's accounts, written on the drawings in Arabic, of their injuries. Translation to English and French.

DRAWN FROM THE FIRE Children of the Intifada

In 1989, Heather Spears spent six weeks in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank, drawing the children of the Intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. The exhibition, of which this is the illustrated catalogue, was chosen from a body of work comprising 300 drawings. Made swiftly in pencil and chalk on the backs of brown envelopes, written across in Arabic by the children they depict, brought secretly out of Israel, these drawings are an immediate and intimate witness to the individual lives of children caught up in a conflict that itself is characterized by terrible intimacy, the intimacy of the breaking of bones, the penetration of bullets, the feel of a stone in a hand, or a hand pressed into the fire.

In 1989-90, Heather Spears toured the US and Canada for 9 months with her drawings of wounded Intifada children. They have been exhibited, among other places, at the UN in Geneva, UN Plaza in New York, in Washington, D.C., Oxford, Cambridge and London. Dr. Jonathan Fine, Director of Physicians for Human Rights, has called her drawings "a moving contribution to understanding the suffering of Palestinians under occupation – an instance where drawings and sparse commentary have power transcending almost any other kind of communication."

May be ordered from the author for $10 plus postage.

POETRY , SCIENCE FICTION, BOOKS OF DRAWINGS

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