Tate buys Sabra and Shatila

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Tate Museum is buying a work based on 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees.

The Tate Museum in London is buying a work based on the 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees who had sought shelter in camps near Beirut, according to The Art Newspaper.

“Sabra and Shatila Massacre” (1982-83) is a vast drawing by the Iraqi artist Dia Azzawi focused on a historical event often called the “modern Guernica.” The Sabra and Shatila refugee camps were established during the Lebanese civil war. In September 1982, members of the Christian Phalangist militia, enraged by the assassination of their leader, murdered hundreds, possibly thousands, of the Palestinian refugees housed at the camps, despite the fact they were guarded by the Israeli Defense Force. The three-day massacre has come to be considered the bloodiest event of the Arab-Israeli conflict, reported the Art Newspaper. According to the Tate, Azzawi was influenced by a report coming from the camps by the late French writer and activist Jean Genet. “A photograph doesn’t show the flies… nor the thick white smell of death. Neither does it show how you must jump over the bodies,” Genet wrote in his report. Azzawi’s work can be seen in the Transformed Visions display at the Tate Modern.