Untitled, 1989, by Palestinian artist Tayseer Barakat, depicts two women floating and moving above a boat in the Mediterranean Sea. The wooden boats’ orange- brown color is distinct in this piece because the remaining elements, namely the two women and the sea, share the same constrained palette. The women’s dresses reflect the same shades of blue, green, and yellow in the background, depicting the sea. This interwoven color palette makes us wonder about the relationship between the women and the sea.

Those are two women or a single woman being separated from herself, as the artist hints at by merging the lower part of the two dresses. The diagonal positioning and mirroring of these women in relation to the boat accentuates a sense of the strangeness within the work.

Stretching away from oneself or fleeing a situation returns to a common theme in many of Barakat’s works, often related to the notion of escape or flight. The separation from self while floating in an open sea provides a contradictory image that encapsulates the injustice of Palestinians not being able to have free access to their own sea.

The woman in this painting cannot physically escape her reality under occupation; only her soul or inner self can attempt to detach from the physical realm. Her actual body, i.e., the Palestinian body, is forced to remain tethered to the boat, confined by the whims of an occupying force. There is no absolute joy in this painting; the woman’s face does not hint at relief or happiness, only at the starkness of a reality that demands dreaming of escape in spaces meant to be open.

signed and dated in Arabic front lower right