Seeing Through Walls [Visions of Peace and Unity]

“When I was a child in Iraq, I found my love for painting. I felt that there was something inside me that I had to let out. When I saw my people suffering on television or when I read something terrible on the news I had to paint my feelings.”- Thaer Abdallah, Artist/Human rights activist

Born in Bagdad, Thaer Abdallah is a Boston based Palestinian artist and human rights activist. His parents originated from Haifa, the largest city in northern Israel. They both fled to Baghdad in 1948 following the Palestinian War after the declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel. Palestinians living in Iraq were considered ethnic minorities and were never awarded official status by the Iraqi government.

After the 2003 Iraq War, Thaer took a risk and led a few Palestinian families out of Iraq to avoid kidnapping, torture, killings and imprisonment by Iraqi militia. He stayed with the families in a makeshift camp in Syria, where he shared his love of art with children.

“You could tell how happy the children were when they painted. Their emotions poured out,” he said. Abdallah didn’t have a significant amount of supplies, but instead painted on black velvet materials when canvases were not available. “My paintings always tell a story of what is going on around me. People who see my paintings might not be able to understand the feeling of seeing these bad things, but you can feel it through painting,” he commented.

In 2007, Syrian authorities kidnapped Thaer. He was tortured and deported back to Iraq because of his relationship with an American human right activist and his work supporting Palestinian refugees. He then took another risk and fled Iraq for a challenging route to Greece from Turkey. Abdallah later arrived to the United States with his wife, then peace activist Sheila and human rights agencies. He later became a United States citizen in 2008 and continues to use his paintings to tell his story of pain suffering, survival and faith for peace among Muslims and Jews.

In 2010, Thaer and five Jewish and Muslim artists teamed up to create a mosaic in response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The mural is called “Seeing Through Walls.” The vision behind the mosaic was fellow Roslindale artist Vivienne Shalom and her sister Beverly. The sisters planned on traveling to Israel until they had heard news of Israel attacking the Gaza Strip. “ It was around 2007 or 2008 when it happened and we were just appalled, and we wanted to find a way to respond to this,” said Shalom.

For a couple of year the group created sketches of what they’d envisioned the mural to portray. The idea became a sketch of Muslim and Jewish women standing opposite of a river painting their future where all people of different religious denominations live in “peace and unity.”

The purpose of the peace mural was to encourage conversations about the conflicts and ways to begin healing and reconciliation between the two sides. “If you go to the root of the conflict, basically Palestinians consider their land to be occupied. And they want resolution, but people are still trying to figure out what the real solution is the problem. It all starts will conversation, said Boston-based artist Adnane Benali.

This month, the team finalized the mosaic. The 5-by-9 foot mural is now exhibited at Boston City Hall.