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Handala in Queens, NY .  July 2024




The Handala Project


A series of geo-specific Handala sculptures being installed in different parts of the world as beacons of cross-cultural solidarity.  Addressing the issue of land dispossession, each sculpture is handbuilt using locally foraged clay from each region, thereby connecting Palestine to all indigenous struggles across the globe. Stay tuned for “Handala in Mexico” slated for Mexico City in 2025.   

If you are interested in learning more or getting involved in this project in whatever capacity, please get in touch.

Contact Peloloca


A word from Handala


.اسمي حنظلة

.أوقات بنسَأل ايش بيعني اسمي
.بقلهم أنه اسم نبتة تكبر في أصعب الظروف
.الكبار دائما لازم نشرح لهم كل اشي

.أنا من فلسطين
.ما عدتش ساكن هناك، لكن حرجع
.دائمًا براقب بشوف قد ايش قربت

.في ناس بقولولي ما أفكر فالموضع كثير
.بقولولي أركز على اشي ثاني
.وأغير هدومي. وما إمشيش حافي
.وأفرجي وجهي قبلما ارجع عبيتي
.عمري ما رح افهم الكبار

وانتوا؟
.بتمنى ما تكونوش زي الكبار
،بحب أعرف انتوا مين، وانتوا من اين
.وايش بتشعروا فقلبكم باللحظات قبلما تناموا

.اسمي حنظلة
.أنا فلسطيني
تحبوا تكونوا فلسطينيين معي؟

My name is Handala. 

Grownups ask me what my name means. 
I tell them it is the name of a plant that grows in the harshest of conditions. Grownups always seem to need to have things explained for them.

I am from Palestine. 
I don't live there anymore, but I will return.  
I'm always on the lookout for how soon I will. 

Some tell me I should pay less attention to what's happening.  They say I should focus on something else. Change my clothes. Stop walking barefoot. 
Show my face before I go back home. 
I will never understand grownups.

What about you? 
I hope you're not a grownup. 
I would love to know who you are, where you are from, what feelings run through your heart as you go to sleep.

My name is Handala. 
I am Palestinian. 
Will you be Palestinian with me?

~ poem by Alain Alameddine
One Democratic State Initiative


Handala by Naji al-Ali, 1969




        

Artist statement

When I first encountered the drawing of Handala, I instantly found myself moved by him. His silent, defiant stance clearly exhibited his dispossession, yet despite his tattered clothes and bare feet, one did not sense despair in him. I soon learned that this boy carried not just the soul of every Palestinian fighting for liberation and their right of return; Handala’s image had been taken up by people’s movements across the globe. Soon after his creation, Handala showed up in the Vietnam war protests; he witnessed the toppling of Apartheid in South Africa; he appeared in the Iranian Green movement in 2009 and in the BLM protests across USA in 2020.  

Created in 1969 by political cartoonist and prominent figure of the Palestinian movement Naji al-Ali, Handala has remained frozen in time, a perennial 10 year old, marking al-Ali's age when he was displaced from Palestine in the 1948 Nakba. Al-Ali drew the head of the child like a Handal (a resilient bitter gourd native to the region) and he made the figure easy to draw, facilitating the multitudes of 2D reproductions in the decades that followed. Today, Handala has become a ubiquitous protest symbol. 

If a graffiti symbol embodied so much power, what could it imbue in sculptural form? This curiosity led me to build Handala in stoneware. Creating Handala in 3-dimensional form also posited a unique challenge in addressing al-Ali's wish to never show Handala’s face until he could return home to Palestine. In finding ways to honor that wish, I discovered that Handala's form offered a broader canvas — one that could tell stories of resistance and solidarity across cultures and historical moments. This sparked the idea of creating a series of totems that paved a path home for all the world’s dispossessed, if only symbolically.



Handala detail, Peloloca 






Handala at 
Hind’s House

Nov 9-10 Handala joins artists and students gathering at Hind’s House on Nov 9-10. Hind’s House is a project of collective witnessing organized by the student encampment movement at Columbia University fighting the ongoing death, destruction and displacement in Palestine. Columbia has used all tools of oppression to repress and silence the student movement against genocide. Nonetheless, students are finding new ways to organize right outside of campus gates, converting a house into HIND’S HOUSE during the Palestinian Children’s Days of Action—one year after the children’s press conference at the Al Shifa Hospital.  






Handala at Fallow Frames Biennial

July 13-14 The Handala sculpture appeared on a street corner in Queens, New York as part of Fallow Frames in the summer of 2024. The public engagement with the 2-foot-tall sculptural figure was overwhelming, as several passersby stopped in their tracks to engage with the piece. The public were greeted with a poem in the voice of Handala (written by Alain Alameddine), breaking the ice for deeper conversations about a political subject matter that most typically shy away from. Drawing from the public’s response, it was evident that nothing disarms better than the spirited truth-telling of a dispossessed child.