Leena Nammari

Running on empty. Etching 2016 © Leena Nammari

I cannot be from anywhere else

I cannot belong to anywhere else

I am from there, I am from here

Leena Nammari’s works make space for time and place, stimulating the thoughts and feelings we have about where we come from and who we are. Her works emerge from her lived experiences as a Palestinian resident in Scotland; using non-industrial processes which retain connection with materials, ritual and place she undertakes acts of resistance against the exile caused by colonialism and warfare. Please see this link to the Third Culture website.

“My Dad wasn’t allowed to talk German after the 1948 war as my Grandmother’s German-Jewish origins had become the enemy in our Palestine home. She had struggled as her Arabic wasn’t great and as an outsider, she was a threat to the family’s financial stability and emotional confidence.

“It was the middle of the first Intifada, we had 24 hour curfews, the schools closed for two years. I wanted to go to Birzeit University in Ramallah but I failed my exams. Everyone who could leave left, we who stayed took risks and some of us got hurt, caught and changed. I had a British passport so I left too. My sister and I had no money and we searched for ways to receive some money for food, and for somewhere to live. I stayed for two years in lodgings until I got my Highers and then I worked in nursing as I could earn while I studied to become qualified.

“We are born to be storytellers. We tell our stories through our writing, our art making, our talking, recording, and increasingly, our use and our taking of photographs. Part of the storytelling is a play on memory, memory of the past, and embellishing what is known. Each person is the storyteller of their own life, whether this could be notable or ordinary, remarkable or forgettable, we have become the stars of our own self-perpetuating myths.

“I am a Jerusalemite. I cannot be from anywhere else, yet I chose to live somewhere else.
I find myself elsewhere.
Nostalgia plays a significant role in all that I do, how I think and behave.
Nostalgia is an echo of the lost past, for a changing present and an uncertain future.
Nostalgia is an echo of the familiar.

“I feel it is my duty to look, to record, to observe, to comment, to echo.
An echo of abandoned homes, of collective memory.

“Nostalgia for place, smell and sound, all constructs of my longing imagination, of places forgotten, of sounds lost, and of moments past, of people, of friends of family scattered, of the smell of zou’tmaneh (spearmint) underfoot, of wild delicate miniature cyclamen sprouting from small crevices, of wild thyme, of olive trees rooted in their fields, with the tilled earth around them of crumbled stone dwellings with facades covered in ivy.

“I have observed places long forgotten, dismissed, unnoticed, and yet long cherished. I have revisited these places, recorded them consciously and unconsciously, all the while trying to preserve something of their essence, for the future, for the past, and for the now.

“The photograph dominates my own working practice as an artist, expounding my narrative. It is my means to narrate a story, stimulate memories into action, echo memories, and connect to the lives of the viewer or observer, whoever that may be.

“Making my personal their personal, and creating a sense of connection, which may not have been there before, or acknowledged.

“The passage of time permits adjustments, alterations and embellishments of memories.
We hear echoes of the distant past, we try to understand; we add stories, we add thoughts and emotions.
We add details that were never there.
We remember through echoes, we remember through photographs.”

Please see Leena Nammari’s research with Cultural Documents here.

Spring Olive and Hearts embroidered motif © Leena Nammari 2019