The Return
1996 - Present
Description
Archivist's visual description.
A crowd of roughly 15 to 20 figures fills a street between two multi-story buildings, both damaged, window openings dark and masonry broken. The figures stand rather than move, densely packed, adults and at least one child among them. In the right foreground the child carries a rectangular framed object held upright against the body, with a face visible inside it. A more heavily worked figure anchors the center foreground. The street surface reads light and largely open beneath them, while the crowd dissolves toward the back into accumulated line.
Worked entirely in grayscale, built from layered cross-hatching, densest in the upper register and around the outer figures. A signature sits in the lower right, not legible at this resolution.
Not determinable from the image and not recorded elsewhere in this archive: the subject of the framed object carried by the child, and the referent of the title.
Artist Notes
Return In this scene, return looks like a journey into the memory of pain and destruction, as returnees walk the streets that once were their homes, but they return despite everything. A child carrying an image may be a symbol of those who lost their lives and could not return, while the man carrying the child may embody the responsibility of older generations to protect the future despite the wounds. This painting is not just a visual scene, but an emotional documentation of a historical moment, expressing the truth of a Palestinian who, no matter how displaced, continues to dream of returning to his land, even if it is under the rubble.
Preservation Notes
Osama's works have all been destroyed since October 7 2023, during what is now termed one of the most departing modern day holocaust's of our generation. These latest sketches are all done on his laptop that he has managed to salvage, and uses it as so many in his circumstance as an artistic tool to create and keep creating his sketches and drawings.
