Homemade Donkey, Homemade Oranges and Homemade Cages, What Else?

Charcoal, ballpoint pen, and pastel on burial shroud, 200 cm x 230 cm (79 in x 91 in) , 2025

Homemade Donkey, Homemade Oranges and Homemade Cages, What Else? was painted on a kafan (an Islamic burial shroud) at the beginning of the ongoing war on Gaza, evoking the fragility of home and the collapse of boundaries between the personal and the political. While the material alludes to mourning and survival, the title of the work is also an inscription on the work that reads like the fragment of a forgotten poem that echoes the spirit of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in its longing and quiet resistance. The painting grapples with the complexity of what remains rather than lamenting what has been lost. The homemade donkey, oranges and cages are not just symbols, but remnants of everyday life transformed by violence that subsist despite confinement. Rather than attempting to recreate or replace Maroun Tomb’s vanished works, this piece responds to their absence. It lives with the silence they left behind, quietly insisting on the presence of what history tried — and failed — to erase. Arar commits an act of remembrance, of resistance, and of poetic defiance.

Aysha E. Arar is a Palestinian artist who uses painting, video, performance and poetry. Her work moves from narrative to abstract painting, where she combines imaginary creatures based on Palestinian legends. She practices the art of resistance to oppression through the power of images and voice via a quest for freedom and its true meaning. Arar exhibited at Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne – Château de Rochechouart, France; CC Strombeek, Belgium; This Weekend Room, Korea; Beaux-Arts de Paris, France; MO.CO. Panacee, France; Cooper Cole, Canada; Umm al-Fahm Gallery, Palestine; and Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland.