The 86th ARTCaffè hosted Aysha E Arar, who connected online from her studio in Jaljulia. We had a full house in the living room, with an audience tuning in online from Belgium, France, Italy, China, Vietnam, Thailand, and South Korea.

Aysha accompanied us into a journey through her practice as a multimedia artist and musician, introducing her powerful and lyrical work: "I don't make art. My heart does make art, decides which painting I should paint today, what song or poem I should write. I am just a good listener of my heart. This is how I make art."

Her work is deeply intertwined with her experience as a Palestinian artist based in Israel and as a woman living in a traditional society. Instead of following a chronological order in her carreer, she unveiled one by one the main topics she is dealing with, seeing art as research of the real meaning of freedom and unconditional love. "Painting gives me the freedom to transfer to any creature I want. In the paintings, I can be anything I want. (...) I feel limited in a political and in a social way. As human beings, we are all limited. For instance, our body limits our soul. What is unique in art is that while I paint, I don't feel those limits and borders."

Aysha works on different surfaces: "For me, art is not something you are not supposed to touch, it is something that comes from my daily life. My daily life, my traditions, my palestian food, clothes, people, grandma's stories, all this inspire me. And I draw on everything I feel connected to."

Caftans, clothes, table clothes, towels, they all become the media where to paint her symbols, through which she conveys her many messages: eyes, to represent "justice, truth, as in Sufi philosophy;" flowers for hope; blue and birds for freedom; hands and feet as the act of wondering and searching about the limits of our movements, because, as she said, "sometimes, I try to free myself from my own body."

To complete the overview on her practice as a multimedia artist, Aysha shared the story about why she started singing and performing, and showed two videos: Amphibia, from 2023, and Jbeni (2012). Regarding Jbeni, in particular, she said: "This story is talking about how womens are limited in the Arabic world, not just in Palestine. Jbeni is about the fact that every year, many women get killed, or there is lot of violence against them - in general, but specifically in traditional societies. I wanted to do something about this, and to critise it."