New Visions

The New Visions group (Naḥw at-Tajrīb wa-l-Ibdāʾ) was founded during the First Intifada by four Palestinian artists - Sliman Mansour, Vera Tamari, Tayseer Barakat and Nabil Anani. Answering the boycott of Israeli goods, they stopped buying imported art supplies and made their work from the land itself: mud, clay, straw, leather, wood, and dyes brewed from coffee, henna, tea and spices. Their 1989 manifesto called for an aesthetic quest able to envision beauty and truth in the midst of their daily struggle for freedom, and their assemblages tied the political directly to Palestinian material life - olive trees, villages, tatreez embroidery, Jerusalem. Often called committed art, the group became a model for political art in Palestine, and in 1994 they founded the Al-Wasiti Art Centre in East Jerusalem.

Defining characteristics

• Art made from the land itself: mud, clay, straw, leather and wood replacing imported paints
• Earthy natural-dye palettes - coffee, henna, tea, olive oil and spices yielding browns and ochres
• Assemblage surfaces, sometimes burned with pyrography or dyed over leather
• Palestinian iconography: olive trees, village scenes, Jerusalem, tatreez embroidery motifs, chains
• Geometric patterning drawn from Islamic art traditions

Key figures

• Sliman Mansour (1947-2026) — Painter and sculptor whose work made sumud (steadfastness) its subject
• Vera Tamari (b. 1945) — Ceramicist and installation artist who developed watercolor painting on ceramic
• Tayseer Barakat (b. 1959) — Painter who works with wood and fire (pyrography)
• Nabil Anani (b. 1943) — Worked wood wrapped in leather and dyed with natural pigments

Example works

• Hikayat Shajara (A Tree's Tale) — Vera Tamari (2002-)
• The March of the Trees (Maissra Ashjaar) — Nabil Anani (2024)
• On the Wings of an Angel (Ala Janah AlMalak) — Sliman Mansour (2024)

Sources

• New Visions - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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