Arti et Amicitiae, founded in 1839, is the oldest artist society in the Netherlands. As the name indicates, the founders sought to promote “Art and Friendship” while improving the economic and social status of artists and facilitating fraternisation. When you enter Arti’s monumental building on Rokin street in the heart of Amsterdam, you are greeted by a dazzling café lounge with high ceilings, sculptures, and paintings lining the walls. Upon studying the cafe walls, the visitors’ gaze may be drawn to the back left corner of the room, where, framed and illuminated almost like a shrine, a painting is nestled. The painting, titled Arti board in discussion with some members (Het Arti-bestuur in bespreking met enige leden) was completed by Huib Luns, the chair of Arti, in 1939. It depicts, from left to right, Lizzy Ansingh (voting member), Jan Sluijters (voting member), Herbert van der Poll (secretary), Sam van Beek (voting member), Huib Luns (chair), Gerard Westermann (second chair), Arnout Colnot (treasurer), Bart Peizel (voting member), Salomon Garf (second secretary), and Felicien Bobeldijk (voting member) (De Horde 2022). The piece was painted for the occasion of Arti's 100th anniversary, just two years before Solomon Garf was dismissed from the board for being Jewish. The written decision which enacted Garf’s exclusion from the society began with the words “You will understand that…” (Arti et Amicitiae 2022) Garf did not sign the Aryan declaration, and eventually perished in Auschwitz on 27 August 1943 (De Horde 2022). Solomon Garf was only one of 15 members who were expelled from Arti for not signing the Aryan Declaration, effectively prohibiting them from working as artists, and were deported to camps and murdered in the years that followed (Arti et Amicitiae 2022). Hanging in the back corner of Arti's distinguished café, this painting, which was originally intended to honour the community, today unintentionally commemorates Arti's role in a traumatic past.

Dalal Mitwally (1998) a Shami artist in between Amman and Rotterdam.

Living most of her early life between two hills and a valley, Dalal has shaped her whole world view through her relationship to the surroundings. Gradually, her preferred lens to view and interact with her surroundings came to be through creating art. This widened her view of visual art beyond the conventional gallery walls and she came to see creating public art as an interactive performance. This understanding, constantly evolving, leads her to question how the outside influences art and vice versa.

“It was evident from the beginning that if we won the war, these promises would be dead paper.”

This quote originates from Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the autobiographical work of T.E. Lawrence. The book documents his thoughts and reflections on his experience as the British military advisor to Sharif Hussein and the Arab Revolt during the First World War. The British encouraged the Arab tribes to fight against the Ottomans even though they were vastly outnumbered, on the promise of granting the Arabs sovereignty over the land that makes up a vast region including present-day Jordan. Internally, however, it was evident from Lawrence’s letters, as well as the outcome of the Sykes-Picot agreement, that this promise was never intended to be fulfilled. The paper correspondence that had etched that promise was always-already dead paper.

This is how Jordanian artist Dalal Mitwally personally related the Arti board in discussion with some members painting with her story. In her work, she forges a link between the colonialist formation of the modern Arab world and the exclusion of Jewish members from Arti during the Second World War. She transfers and re-interprets the concept of “dead paper” from its context in the memoir writings of T.E. Lawrence to Arti’s painted commemoration of a century of fostering art and friendship. While the painting was completed before Arti’s fateful decision to exclude their Jewish members was made, it stands as an eerie foreshadowing to the meeting which would come just two years later and a haunting reminder of the friendship which was not enough to protect Garf from his fate. In both cases, the promises made by those with power were only meaningful in theory—on paper. They did not come to life, and they did not protect those who they implicated from violence and cruelty.

The connection illustrates a sinister nature of colonial violence and conflict heritage, that the decisions which lead to the displacement, dehumanisation, and death of thousands are often first enacted in closed rooms, by the hands of the imperially powerful, using pen and paper.