An elderly porter crosses an empty space, a rope pressing against his forehead. His hands and feet are immense. His body bends beneath the weight of his load: a bag resembling an eye, holding Jerusalem, with its houses clustered around the golden Dome of the Rock. Exhausted, yet he does not stop. For more than half a century, he carried his city. Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour spent his artistic career contemplating what it takes to bear such a load.
The title is The Camel of Burdens, reportedly suggested by Palestinian novelist Emile Habibi. Mansour painted the work in 1973 and turned it into a poster two years later, driven by his desire to convey its message. It quickly became a cross-border phenomenon at the intersection of art, resistance and identity. The painting gained immense popularity in Palestine, with claims that almost every home had a copy, while Palestinians and Arabs of different generations found it meaningful and personal.
The late artist Sliman Mansour. (Facebook)
Mansour was born in Birzeit in 1947, a year before the Nakba. He lost his father at the age of four and was sent to a Lutheran boarding school in Bethlehem, where a German teacher recognized his talent for drawing. The olive groves and stone terraces of Birzeit, along with the clay-and-straw structures his grandmother built, provided him with memories that returned as images and subjects for his paintings.
He studied at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem between 1967 and 1970, moving through a city that had just been divided. In a 2024 interview with The South East Review, he recalled the period following the 1967 war, saying: “We longed for the sea, which is a fundamental cultural factor in our memory.”
From that rift emerged the early icons in Mansour's work. Palestinian farmers gained the stature of historical figures, while women in embroidered dresses embodied the land and fertility. Oranges in his paintings evoked the country lost in 1948, olives symbolized rootedness threatened after 1967, and Jerusalem was sometimes carried between arms and sometimes balanced on a woman's head, borne as a heavy heritage. Every element in his paintings spoke the language of resilience.
'Motherhood' (1980) by Sliman Mansour. (The artist)
Mansour helped establish the Palestinian Artists League in the early seventies and later chaired it from 1986 to 1990. In the absence of permanent galleries, the league disseminated inexpensive posters and postcards, establishing a modern visual culture outside conventional institutions. Israeli military authorities confiscated artworks, closed exhibitions and imposed restrictions on representing the Palestinian flag and its colors. In this context, reproducing works was no longer seen as devaluing art, but as a means of spreading and ensuring its survival.
During the First Intifada, Mansour, Vera Tamari, Nabil Anani and Taysir Barakat founded the group “New Visions.” The artists boycotted supplies manufactured in Israel and imported through it, leading them to use clay, henna, coffee, tea, leather, pottery shards and earth. The Palestinian land became a tangible part of Mansour's works.
'Salma' (1981) by Sliman Mansour. (The artist)
Clay was layered and shaped over wood, left to dry and crack, sometimes crumbling. It carried the memories of beehives and ovens his grandmother made, but it also contained a darker significance: the land and body are subject to fragmentation, their apparent stability vulnerable. The cracks symbolize exile, entropy and the risk of dissolution; the land may crack, but it remains land.
Mansour was also instrumental in building the institutions Palestinian art lacked. He co-founded the Wasiti Art Center in East Jerusalem, taught generations of young artists and helped establish the International Academy of Art in Palestine.
'The Village Awakens' (1987) by Sliman Mansour. (The artist)
With his passing, Palestinian art loses one of its most prominent creators of modern visual memory. The Camel of Burdens has not laid down its load. It remains bowed under Jerusalem, advancing through barren lands, carrying its city to the world.
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