Using visual arts as a tool to tell stories

John Halaka, M.F.A., creates art through his exploration of Palestinian Refugees and farmers

Yana Kouretas / Feature Editor / The USD Vista

John Halaka, MFA., has seen the light from some of the darkest corners of the world. A visual arts professor at USD, Halaka does more than just teach; he creates films, art, and oral history that depict the conditions of refugees and unravel the calamities that face the displaced populations primarily in Palestine, but also Lebanon, Jordan, and Beirut. Since around 16 years ago, Halaka’s travels to Palestine and other Middle Eastern areas have directly informed his visual artwork. He has closely developed connections with those in refugee camps which has allowed him to bring their stories of tragic happenings, displacement of refugees from their homes, and their struggles of disempowerment and dehumanization in these camps to a visual platform. 

Halaka described the measured process that is unlayering the histories behind these displaced communities. It is not simply walking into a camp, but taking the actions that allow him to earn the trust of these individuals so that they will open up to him. 

“I am not there to judge whether they are good or bad, I am there to listen. And in some cases, people have never had a chance to speak, or if they had been able to, their stories have been misconstrued,” Halaka said. “I always let them be the active core of any conversation.”

The tremendous range of outreach Halaka made to refugees, namely Palestinians, was integral to his collection of film, photographs, and drawings. Halaka reached four generations – each of which carried different sentiments toward their situation and the enablers who command their livelihoods in the camps. 

Older generations bear guilt because their lives are deeply-rooted in the origin of the displacement for their families; they wished that they could have done more to prevent this, Halaka explained. 

Meanwhile, younger generations carried anger because they continue to watch the displacement of populations unfold. 

Regardless of the generational impact of displacement, Halaka believes that each narrative he hears deserves to be conveyed through his work in one form or another.

“It is not about the drama or the theatre of these stories. It is about allowing the voices to be heard,” Halaka said. “These people have voices, they have histories, they have realities that they need to see. We just don’t make any effort. They are not invisible or mute.”

Before turning his primary area of focus to Palestine, Halaka received a “Fullbright Award” to spend time in Lebanon in 2011 and 2012 with Palestinian refugees who resided there. In a country with 12 refugee camps at the time, Halaka was not able to reach them all. 

However, he spent nearly a year there producing oral history archives derived from his conversations and interviews, and understanding and learning and producing art that would directly reflect the stories of these individuals. 

“I started locally based in Beirut and I started with one to two of the camps. It starts with one, two, three, four, five interviews until I can feel comfortable walking in and asking questions to people that I don’t know,” Halaka said. “The guys who are selling coffee out of a cart, or those at the grocery store selling cigarettes get to see me enough that I can go and have coffee and chat with them, and then they will introduce me to their grandmothers.” 

In general, when these refugees begin to share their stories with Halaka, he takes hundreds of photos but doesn’t usually find anything save for a few usable, meaningful images. Halaka looks for key factors to capture the essence of refugees’ stories: their faces, body language, and their surrounding environments. 

Similarly, for his drawings, Halaka constructs meditations based on his interactions and how he reads the experience of the individual he has spoken with.

“I generally don’t use literal stories but I am making images about their memories about the villages that they were kicked out of,” Halaka said. “So I juxtapose and overlap images. I am talking about their sense of nostalgia, tragic loss, or yearning for something that has passed.”

For the time being, Halaka has shifted his focus to another project in Palestine called “Vanishing Harvest: Meditations on the Death and Resurrection of Palestine Agriculture.” However, his work with refugees will continue to be ongoing. 

Although it is projected to take nearly five more years of being in Palestine during the fall and summertimes to conclude, Halaka began to investigate the political, economic, and environmental crises solely in the West Bank, where the land is consumed by Israeli settlements. 

“I am looking at the farmers as a continuation of the process of cultural erasure and ethnic cleansing and displacing the Palestinians from Palestine,” Halaka said.

Additionally, Halaka started to examine how Palestinian land and aquaphor systems are being claimed by the Israelis,’ and how this has impacted their lives.

”Palestinian farmers are increasingly being converted from agarian workers to low-paid day laborers working in fields stolen from them,” Halaka said.

In his time so far, he connected with the Union of Agricultural Workers Committee (UAWC), an organization that has served as a channel for him to communicate with these Palestinian workers. The UAWC is instrumental to his work because obtaining transport and meetings with local village farmers are challenged by the land discontinuation and division of the West Bank into different Israeli-occupied areas.

Through his projects, Halaka asserted that he is a witness and not a storyteller. Regardless, he has the tools to produce photographs, drawings, and oral history to convey the land dispossession and erasure of traditional and familial agricultural practices and to give them a voice in this time. 

“The traditional agrarian culture that was local and sustainable is being wiped out,” Halaka said. “I am seeing the process of self-selected exile—instead of pushing them all away, you create conditions that make them want to run away.” 

Despite the inhumanity or calamity of the situation, Halaka pulls out unexpected slivers of light from the bleak experiences of the refugees and farmers alike. 

His work serves to highlight the realities of these individuals, but also the work that they have done to maintain their culture and their demonstration of courage to tell their stories. 

“Because I make work that is sort of political and often depressing, I always kind of try to identify the spotlight on efforts by the refugees on how they deal with stress and how they rise above it,” Halaka said. “How they have hope.” 

While his research and visual work in Palestine and other areas is an engrossing project, Halaka attempts to separate it from his teaching at USD. Instead, he tries to overlap the objective of producing purposeful, intentional work. 

“I try to get them to first develop really strong technical skills, then get them to think about research and topics of interest so eventually they are using that language in a poetic way to say a meaningful thing. Skills, research, the poetry of the topic,” Halaka said. “I don’t need them to all be activists, but I just want them to make work that is meaningful to them.”

In the coming years, Halaka will continue to visit Palestine for his Vanishing Harvest piece, producing work that will serve to express and let viewers witness acts of resistance, survival, and the universal repression of displaced populations.