Photo Album

The Earth of Palestine in Sliman Mansour’s Art

August 20, 2025

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Portrait of a Woman, 2019. Mud and acrylic on wood. The portrait shows a woman with the top of her head down to the bridge of her nose painted in acrylic. The rest of her face and neck are executed in overlaid mud that has dried and cracked.

Credit:

Sliman Mansour’s Instagram feed

Temporary Escape, 2019. Mud and acrylic on wood. 110 x 110 cm. This piece shows a standing figure with his head halfway above the sea of mud beneath. Only the top third of the painting is carried out in acrylic, while the rest is in mud.

Credit:

Sliman Mansour via Wikiart

The Village, 1990. Mud on wood. 80 x 85 cm. In this piece, we see a tactile, earthy surface dominated by rich mud tones. The surface seems cracked and weathered as if the work itself has survived through a vast expanse of time.

Credit:

Sliman Mansour via Tabari Art Space

Absent Presence, 2018. Mud and acrylic on wood. 145 x 110 cm. This painting shows a man and a woman standing side by side. Only their legs are painted in acrylics, while the rest of their bodies are made of overlaid clay that has dried and cracked.

Credit:

Sliman Mansour via Wikiart

Absent Presence II, 2019. Mud and acrylic on wood. 140 x 100 cm. This painting shows a woman and a boy standing while holding hands. Only their heads are visible, while the rest of their bodies are overlaid with cracked mud. They both appear to be wearing traditional Palestinian clothes, although their garments are obscured by the clay.

Credit:

Sliman Mansour via Wikiart

Sliman Mansour’s Peace, 2007. Mud on wood. Peace shows the imprint of a bird carrying an olive tree branch against a background of mud. The mud surface is cracked and fragmented.

Credit:

Sliman Mansour via On Caravan

Shrinking Object, 1996. Mud on wood, 60 x 105 cm. The portrait shows a map of Palestine made of clay. The cracks and fissures in the middle symbolize the fragmentation and erosion of Palestinian territory.

Credit:

Sliman Mansour

This photo includes two separate works that Sliman placed together for an exhibition in 2002. On the wall, I, Ismael consists of six large standing males created from mud on wood panels. The title of the work refers to the biblical story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar in Genesis, wherein Ismael, son of Abraham’s concubine Hagar, was exiled from his homeland once Abraham’s wife Sarah gave birth to a son, Isaac. Ismael is regarded as the biblical ancestor of the Palestinian people.

On the floor below is Garden of Hope, 2002, a bed of dry clay painted with large red flowers with green leaves.

Credit:

Sliman Mansour via Bidoun

Sliman Mansour working with mud to create art, 2020

Credit:

Independent Arabia

Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour’s grandmother, Salma, was a potter (see Sliman Mansour). As a boy, Mansour worked with her in their family home and observed her using mud and straw to make earthenware vessels. She also built ovens, beehives, and construction material using mud mixed with straw. When Mansour spent time with his grandmother as a child, he too practiced pottery.1 These early memories inspired his future artistic exploration of mud and natural materials.

During the First Intifada, and as a response to the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, Mansour and his peers intentionally boycotted Israeli art supplies. Rummaging through his early memories, he turned instead to materials deeply rooted in his upbringing—mud, coffee, and henna from Palestinian land.

What began as an experiment developed into a fully-fledged mode of resistance and unique Palestinian artistic expression. Mansour described using mud as a way of returning to the land and asserting independence from colonial supply chains.

“Mud is symbolic for human beings,” he explains. “It’s symbolic for land; it’s symbolic for Palestine. If you leave the mud to dry and crack . . . it represents what you see wherever you go here in the geography: it’s fragmented.”2

This Photo Album includes Mansour’s most recent artwork using natural material. These portraits combine mud and acrylic on wood. The effect of this is a contrast between the rough cracks of the bottom layer and the smooth painted colors above, representing the political and lived experience of Palestinians as they navigate their reality. The use of natural material connects Mansour’s personal childhood memories, Palestinian heritage, and political resistance into a single artistic expression that signifies belonging to Palestine.