Maher Naji is a Palestinian painter, based in Gaza. Maher’s family was forced to flee from Northern Sawafer Village prior to his birth, and he was born in 1963 in Jabaliya Refugee Camp in Gaza, where he finished his primary and secondary education.
He left for Russia in 1983 to join the Baron Stieglitz Art Academy in St. Petersburg and returned to Gaza in 1994 after receiving his PhD in Arabian Architecture. During his stay in Russia, he participated in numerous exhibitions and since coming back to Gaza he has continued to pursue his work as an artist, whilst under blockade since 2007.
Maher’s artwork is inspired by his family’s memories of Palestine before 1948. “He relies on his mother’s vast details of her memories, for every line and shape in his paintings” says Maher. His art is a means of preserving Palestinian culture. “The memories I paint are also the hopeful visualisations of return” says Maher.
The hand mill is for Maher Naji, a tool that elicits such powerful memories of the home that he was raised in, in the village of Al Sawafir, Gaza. In this dreamlike depiction entitled, ‘The Remaining Memory’, Naji visually interprets his mother’s recounting of the hand mill and the manner in which it was used to grind wheat grains as she conversed with the women that surrounded her.
