The body of work in this exhibition “Night Shall Clear” is part my larger theme exploring the patterns of nature. It is fascinating and mesmerizing to see how, for instance, the triangle-like shapes of the Conus Marmoreus shell repeat and are different at each iteration; and on a closer look, we find out that hardly any of these shapes is a triangle.
My work with organic patterns started when I began making woodcuts. First, the woodgrain was my main motif, then I explored the patterns of the rind of the pineapple. Later I devised digital and printmaking methods to reproduce the web of fibres inside the fruit. In 2014 was my first prints reproducing a flat iteration of jagged lines of the watermelon. More prints came in 2017 with the tracing of fibres of its flesh onto a large woodblock to create the series “Seeing a Watermelon”. Printmaking allows me to reproduce nature’s finest details while still seeing a shell or a fruit anew.
“For this exhibition, I revisited the watermelon as it has become a ubiquitous symbol of Palestinian solidarity, powerfully capable of circumventing online censorship. To me also, all things Palestinian now have an added resonance as I kept in touch with Nasser Rabah, a Palestinian author living in Gaza, whom I first translated and corresponded with in 2020. At the outset of the genocide, my co-translators and I worked on bringing his free and irreverent voice in a bilingual collection of his poetry, “Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece” that came out this spring from City Lights Publishers.
Rabah’s poem “Night Rain” inspired some of the new watermelon prints and watercolors, and other works pay homage to the cultural sites destroyed or damaged since the outset of this war. It is my firm belief that such a war is only possible when we dehumanize the other to a point where the consciousness of their existence is devoid of all that is beautiful and imaginative. And while we witness one of the darkest chapters of our collective humanity during this live-streamed genocide, we cannot help but bow in awe of the Palestinians’ collective will to live as they carry on through, blockade, famine, air raids, and shelling. Doctors and nurses keep attending to their patients, reporters file their dispatches, teachers teach, some keep writing poems, play instruments, and even crack jokes. Such a determination to live, as Tunisian poet Echabbi once put it, shall break chains and force night to clear.”
© Emna Zghal, 2025
Emna Zghal is a Tunisian-American visual artist. Her artwork features expansive fictional spaces that mirror the infinite repetition and variety of natural patterns.
Reviews of her exhibits appeared in the pages of The New Yorker magazine, The New York Times, Artform, among other publications.
Noted public collections include the Newark Museum, Flint Institute of Art, Yale University Library, The New York Public Library, The Africa Center, New York, and The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture New York, The Tunisian Ministry of Culture and the Government of Qatar and now Jacaranda Images in Amman- Jordan.
