Tote Bag

Signature tote bag of "One Normal Day," a painting by our first Artist in Residence, Ahmed Hmeedat. The first painting in this series uses a common image from Palestinian culture – a man relaxing with a hookah – to depict, with a sense of humor, a fantasy about the future. In the background, we see the slowly decaying ruins of an Israeli checkpoint. The building shows the effects of the passage of time. What we see is a future vision of Palestine where the Occupation is a thing of the past. The artist’s rejection of realism in favor of the use of contrasting colors reflects his view that at this moment, peace in Palestine stands only as an abstract future possibility, whereas the human figure depicted in the painting may well know peace as an inner reality.