Life on the Window
2001 - Present
Description
A vertical painting of a potted prickly pear cactus set in front of a window on a horizontally sided wall.
The cactus rises from a tapered pot whose rim sits at roughly the lower third, its base resting on a ledge that crosses the bottom quarter of the composition. Around nine flattened oval pads radiate upward and outward in a fan, the uppermost reaching the top quarter of the canvas. Behind the plant, a window with a dark frame and visible mullions fills most of the middle and upper area, divided into two upper lights and a lower section. Wall siding runs as stacked horizontal bands along the left and right edges.
Magenta, crimson, and coral dominate the wall and ledge, with lighter pink and pale orange streaks on the left-hand siding. The window glass moves from pale greyish blue in the upper panes to deeper navy and slate below. The cactus pads are mid-green with yellow-green highlights along their edges, white and pale yellow spine marks, and small dark dots across some pads. The pot is tan and ochre with brown shading on its left side and interior rim. The frame is dark maroon to near-black.
The paint is opaque and brushy with canvas weave visible throughout. The window panes are flat and blended; strokes on the pot follow its curvature; the siding is built from short repeated horizontal strokes with gaps of underlying color showing through. Spines are applied as short individual flicks of white and yellow in thicker paint over the green. The cactus pad edges are soft rather than hard-contoured. A cursive signature in dark paint runs along the bottom left edge of the painted surface, partially obscured.
Artist Notes
It depicts a window from a home in Gaza, where a resilient cactus grows toward the light despite the cracked walls. The painting expresses the strength of resilience and hope in the face of adversity, carrying a message of life that continues to pulse amid pain
Preservation Notes
PROVISIONAL. All observations below are from visual inspection of a digital image. No physical examination has been carried out. DIMENSIONS Recorded as 50 x 35 with no unit set. The unit field is empty on this record and on all eight works in this collection. Not inferred. Requires confirmation. MEDIUM Recorded as "canvas", which names the support rather than the medium. Visual inspection shows opaque brushy paint with canvas weave showing through and thicker application in the cactus spines, consistent with oil or acrylic. The medium itself is unrecorded. Note the capitalisation split across this collection between "canvas" and "Canvas". PHYSICAL LABEL ON THE WORK, ACTION NEEDED A small white rectangular paper slip bearing the handwritten text "art.bilal-ramadan" sits on or over the lower left of the painted surface in the photograph. The same label appears in the photographs of The Authenticity of the Land and The Prophecy of the Sacred Feather. On this work it partially obscures the artist's signature, which is visible only as a cropped cursive mark beginning with letters resembling "Rama". Two concerns. First, adhesive or paper resting directly on a painted surface is a conservation risk, particularly if the paint was not fully cured. Whether the label was adhered or simply laid on the surface for the photograph should be established and recorded. Second, the label obscures catalogue information, so the full signature on this work has not been read. NAME SPELLING The label reads "bilal-ramadan", with a single a in the surname. The artist record in this archive reads "Bilal Ramadaan". Both spellings are now attested within the archive, one of them apparently in the artist's or studio's own hand. Not standardised. The correct form should come from the artist. SOURCE FILE 3024 x 4032 px. Aspect ratio only. Physical dimensions not derivable from the file.
