In the Artist’s Words
While working on the cover for this issue and it’s theme of ‘Food’, my thoughts always came back to my Palestinian grandmother, who cooked food native to our homeland for my family everyday of my upbringing in exile. Food is important to me because it’s one of the ways I grew up understanding Palestinian heritage and history, and is one of the only means Palestinians have to connect to and recognize our past. Our food goes back further than modern times, and we’re always thought about as a people entangled in a never-ending struggle, or not as a people at all. Food is something tangible— our food establishes legitimacy in our existence and in our truth. I wanted to create a scene of a grandmother and her grandchild preparing a traditional meal together while also connecting it directly to their heritage, which I captured with a symbol of an olive tree in the illustration with the aroma of the food turning into branches and connecting itself to the tree. The olive tree has long been a symbol of longevity and specifically resistance when it comes to the Palestinian struggle. The most challenging part of creating this piece was that it was difficult to visualize something personal in a more fantastical way, since the magazine is centered around speculative fiction. I knew I wanted it to be related to the olive tree as that is directly related to the Palestinian struggle, but I also wanted the scene to capture a moment that is universal between a grandparent and a grandchild. I hope the warmth of this moment comes through to the readers.
-Aya Ghanameh