Peace Posters Transcript
HOST: Today on Peace Talks Radio, we explore the power of peace posters.
Carol Wells: So if you're on the fence and you're not sure what to think, a poster will say, "Hey, there's people out there that don't agree. Maybe I should look into that." People who make posters are optimists. They believe people can change. If they had the information, they might have a different opinion.
Iiam Khan: It's just such a beautiful thing to see that people are now taking a stand against all of the atrocities that are being committed, even in the smallest sense of creating a poster, and it just creates a bigger community that can take on all of these issues in the world.
HOST: How art can challenge conflict, inspire solidarity, and sometimes even help change the course of history.
That's today on Peace Talks Radio.
This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. Whether it's the search for inner peace, harmony in our closest relationships, or understanding in our workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, and beyond, we explore it here on Peace Talks Radio. From personal moments to global movements, we consider what it takes to build a more peaceful world.
I'm Jessica Ticktin today with Nadeen Shaker. As wars and conflicts continue around the globe, it's easy to feel powerless. But for generations, artists have used posters to give ordinary people a voice, to express dissent, show solidarity, and sometimes help build movements for peace. Artist, curator, and art historian Carol Wells has spent decades collecting political posters from around the
She believes that while a poster alone can't stop a war, it can change hearts and minds, inspire people to act, and sustain movements over time. Correspondent Nadeen Shaker [00:02:00] speaks with Wells about the remarkable history of peace posters and the role they continue to play today. In part two of the program, we'll hear the story behind one of the most recognizable symbols of solidarity in recent years, the watermelon.
But first, Nadeen Shaker talks with Carol Wells.
Nadeen Shaker: Tell us about the first poster that changed your life. Where were you exactly when that happened, and what impact did it have on you?
Carol Wells: So basically, throughout the '80s, my prime focus was Central America. I'd been doing Nicaragua work since 1979, after the revolution was successful in Nicaragua, overthrowing the US-backed Somoza dictatorship.
And so I became involved with the Nicaragua Solidarity Movement, and also the whole Central America Solidarity Movement. And in 1981, a UCLA professor that collected posters since the Vietnam War, since the '60s, he used to go down every summer to different places around the world. UCLA would fund him often [00:03:00] to collect posters.
Nadeen Shaker: Mm-hmm.
Carol Wells: And he knew I was working on Nicaragua and spoke a little Spanish, and he hired me to go down to collect posters for him. And posters were below my radar. They were curiosities. They weren't important. They weren't art to me. They weren't historical documents to me. They were just what I was hired to collect for him.
Nadeen Shaker: Okay. You weren't paying attention to them. You were just doing your job.
Carol Wells: I was doing my job. And so we went around. We just met a lot of musicians and artists and poets, and that was the fascinating thing to me, just collecting posters. And one day, we went into the women's organization, AMLE, association named after Luisa Amanda Espinoza, who was a young woman killed by the Somoza government, and they were having this big demonstration in three days, and they had a...
They had just got the posters in. And so instead of giving us one, they gave us a dozen. And at that time, I didn't know what to do with a dozen. We kept a, a [00:04:00] few, but we were re-gifting them to people who gave us posters, and we gave one to the family where we were living. So I gave her this poster, and she put it up in her living room.
And a few days later, this neighbor came over with her young son, and the two women went off to talk privately. And for some reason, I was alone in the living room with her son, who was about nine, eight or nine, and he's never been there before, and he's looking around. He's taking stock. He's comparing. "Oh, they have a TV.
We have a TV. They have a picture of Jesus. We have a picture of Jesus." I mean, he's comparing, and then he sees the poster And he was short and the poster was kind of high, and I watched him walk over to the poster mouthing the words. He was trying to figure them out. And the words in English, it would translate, "In building the new country, we are becoming the new woman."
I would bet money that he did not understand what it meant, but he tried to figure it out, and that was the [00:05:00] moment, literally the epiphany that was so strong because that was the moment I understood how posters work. You're going about your daily life, and we all have bubbles around us to get through the days, and a good poster has the ability to break through that bubble and make us look at something we had never seen before and ask a question.
A good poster will always make us ask a question. And whenever we ask a question, we're not the same person b- before we ask the question because all of a sudden we're confronted with something in this universe that we didn't understand, that we don't know. Hmm. And it could be as simple as why is that poster there?
Why did they make that? What did they mean? What does it mean? But the very fact of asking a question is transformative.
Nadeen Shaker: After you've had that eureka moment, you know, the light bulb flashed in your head, you realized the importance of posters, [00:06:00] and you started obsessing over them. What happened after that?
Carol Wells: Well, I, I made a big change. At that time, I was still in graduate school. I still was finishing my dissertation in medieval 12th century French architecture. I realized even if it was the best dissertation in the world, it wasn't gonna change anybody's life. And so I first came back with all these posters and we...
David had money from UCLA to put together an exhibition and gave my first lecture on art, on poster art and politics. It was all 1981. And then I started traveling with it. But you know, Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, the slideshow that he went all over the country with, I was doing that with the, with the Nicaragua slideshow.
I was going all over the country and Canada. I literally went to, to, to New Haven, Connecticut. I spoke at Yale. I went to Boston. I went to Halifax, Nova Scotia. I went to... I went to Arkansas.
Nadeen Shaker: Everywhere Carol went to put out her [00:07:00] exhibit, she asked for posters, in research centers, universities and colleges, and even in bookstores
Carol Wells: And they all had old posters that they were using as note- they'd tape them on the wall, and they'd use the blank white back for making an agenda for their meetings.
Nadeen Shaker: Wow.
Carol Wells: So I said, "I'll take some." You know, so I gave them an opportunity to clean house. But every place else, I literally, all these progressive bookstores were also meeting places and c- served as community centers, and I literally would come home with posters every place I went. And so that's when we decided to form the Center for the Study of Political Graphics.
Nadeen Shaker: That's amazing. And now it houses 85,000 posters. Is that right? Over
Carol Wells: 90. Over 90.
Nadeen Shaker: Over 90. Okay. And what is the collection that you feel is closest to your heart?
Carol Wells: That's the question I get asked the most, that one and what's my favorite poster, and One of the things I [00:08:00] feel really privileged about is that I don't have to choose one area.
I can do any area that's of meaning to me or that's in the headlines at the moment.
Nadeen Shaker: Mm-hmm.
Carol Wells: And so it's not a single issue archive like most other archive- many of the other archives are. And I think Audre Lorde was the one who said something about, you know, we do not have single issue problems. They're all interrelated.
And the archive reflects that, and our exhibitions reflect that also. We've done dozens and dozens of exhibitions that have been in over 400 places around the world. And in addition, we loan posters to some major museums. We're busy.
Nadeen Shaker: The Center for the Study of Political Graphics is indeed a global archive.It has a wide varying catalog containing the rich histories of global political expression through posters. Things you'd never expect, like the Chicano Civil Rights Movement led by Mexican Americans, 19th [00:09:00] century satirical lithographs, and posters from countries all over Africa, Middle East, and Asia. So in your opinion, what do you think makes a peace poster effective?
Carol Wells: Trying to stop a war.
Nadeen Shaker: And in what way can they be used to stop wars?
Carol Wells: Well, first, by bringing attention to the issue. Education. The audience for posters are the people who agree with you, but think that they're the only ones with that opinion. They think they're a minority. So posters really show you're not alone in thinking this.
So if you're on the fence and you're not sure what to think, a poster will say, "Hey, there's people out there that don't agree. Maybe I should look into that." People who make posters are optimists. They believe people can change. If they had the information, they might have a different opinion. And there's many different messages in peace posters.
There's just stop the war, no war, but then there's also the anti-intervention, which is really very close [00:10:00] to stopping the war. But then there's solidarity. It's not just stopping the war, but helping the opposition. But then there's the, you know, how much money, you know, like stopping military spending instead of using that money for healthcare or education.
So that's not directly trying to stop a war, it's trying to re-reprioritize where our tax money should be spent.
Nadeen Shaker: You're hearing from Carol Wells, founder of the Center for Study of Political Graphics. A moment ago, when I asked you what makes a peace poster a peace poster, you said its ability to stop a war, and that same question or argument you made maybe a decade ago when you gave this really interesting TED Talk in which you asked, "Can art stop a war and save a planet?"
Can you just tell us why did you give that TED Talk, and what argument were you trying to make there?
Carol Wells: Well, the argument I was trying to make was that art is [00:11:00] powerful, and that because it's powerful, it has been really marginalized to being art for art's sake. Art was, has always been political. This is not anything new.
Nadeen Shaker: Here are some of my favorite parts from Carol's TED Talk Can you give us an example of when a peace poster or political poster started a conversation or shifted consciousness around something, maybe changed a person's mind about something?
Carol Wells: One of the, I think, most intense examples is the My Lai Massacre.
However, your listeners will not have heard of it, but the My Lai Massacre occurred in March of 1968, and it was Charlie Company, US soldiers, who went to a small village, My Lai, and basically they massacred between over 500 people, mainly women and children. There were no weapons found. There were [00:12:00] no shots fired except the ones the US shot.
Many of the women and young girls were raped before they were murdered, and it was kept a secret until Seymour Hersh, the same independent journalist who uncovered the Abu Ghraib torture, he wrote a story about it in, I think, November '69. And when Seymour Hersh broke the story, and of course, that, that horrific photograph with all these dead women and babies in a ditch, in color, people could not avoid it.
And there was an interview, 60 Minutes, I think, started right around that time, and there was an interview, Mike Wallace, with one of the soldiers, one of the GIs that w- involved with the massacre, and he was describing what happened, and Mike Wallace asked him, "And babies?" And the [00:13:00] soldier answered, "And babies."
And The New York Times the next day had the Q, "And babies?" A, "And babies." They had the, they had the dialogue.
Nadeen Shaker: And the question was, like, "And also babies were massacred?"
Carol Wells: Yes, yes. Well, that was the context of the conversation prior to the, that question. Right. He was talking about mas- shooting anything that moved, and then Mike Wallace said, "And babies?"
Nadeen Shaker: Mm-hmm.
Carol Wells: And the soldier answered, "And babies." There had been a, obviously a lot of anti-war organizing, and the organizing together with that photo, they had 50,000 of those printed and they were handed out. They were carried in marches. The photograph was shown, as I said, in all the media. They were put on dorm walls.
But because of that poster, that could not be replaced by the next dramatic event or the next horrific event. That event was kept in front of the US population's consciousness through that poster.
Nadeen Shaker: So and then what happened? What kind of [00:14:00] action took place?
Carol Wells: That was the turning point Of people. People were supporting the war.
They believed the lies that, that we were hearing from Lyndon Johnson and Nixon. They believed them, but that photo becoming a poster, that showed it was a lie. It showed that we weren't fighting it for their good. We weren't doing, trying to bring democracy to them. We were just trying to force them into submission.
Nadeen Shaker: And basically public opinion around the war changed because of that?
Carol Wells: Absolutely, yes. I mean, it was a combination of the movement organizing and that photo to reinforce what they were saying, but that photo was like, almost like the final kick that was needed to say, "I don't want my money, I don't want my tax dollars going there.
I cannot abide by our tax dollars doing that. We're not supposed to do that. We're supposed to be better than that." And we both were talking [00:15:00] earlier about the TED Talk, and-
Nadeen Shaker: And in the TED Talk, Carol tells a story about Martin Luther King, but she tells me during our interview, when she gets offstage, her late husband reminds her that she never actually finished the story.
She tells me the rest of that story during our interview. Here's what she says.
Carol Wells: Martin Luther King was very, was t- told for a long time by his handlers, "Don't talk about international issues. Stick to civil rights, stick to domestic policy, stick... There's enough to deal with just dealing with the unfairness of what's happening in the United States.
Do not go outside. Do not expand the conversation." But in the pit of his stomach, he knew better. And then he was taking a vacation just to get recharged, and he went to the airport with a friend of his, and he bought a bunch of magazines to read on the plane. And [00:16:00] one of the magazines he bought was Ramparts, but they had an article, it was a photo article, on the impact of the Vietnam War on children.
And photo after photo showed children whose faces were melted from napalm, children whose arm had been amputated because of a landmine, a, a baby trying to nurse from a mother who'd been killed. These pictures, just describing them without seeing them are horrific enough. And Martin Luther King is sitting at the table with his friend, and he's, you know, had been eating lunch, and then all of a sudden he just pushes his food away.
And his friend, who wrote about this, said, "What's wrong, Martin? Is something wrong with your food?" And King says, "Nothing will taste good again until this war stops." And at that moment, those photographs moved him to [00:17:00] take a position on the war. Yeah, it was April 1967, his speech, his Vietnam speech, and it was one year to the day that he was assassinated.
And most people, certainly most people that I know, but it's also been written about, are convinced that he was assassinated because he started to take on the Vietnam War And many of those images were made into posters after that, which is also an interesting PS to that story.
Nadeen Shaker: We talked a lot about how posters can inspire us to ask questions, right?
To, like, pause and think about, "Okay, who made this poster? What is it saying?" But I'm also interested in whether it can inspire action, and you also mentioned solidarity at some point. And I wanted to ask you, what kinds of actions can a peace poster realistically spark?
Carol Wells: They can spark people getting involved in a demonstration, [00:18:00] in writing a letter.
And a lot of them will say, "Write to your congressperson. Show up at this demonstration." One of my favorite posters, which actually when it, when I first saw it, I will confess I thought it was kind of lightweight, but now I actually have a necklace with it on. I wear it all the time. It was done for a contest at, uh, Pratt Art Institute in the mid-'60s, a miniature contest, and it said, "War is not healthy for children and other living things."
And Lorraine Schneider was the artist, and she submitted it to this contest. It was rejected. It was called too simplistic, but she had a little printing machine, and she printed it out, and she made little cards that she gave to her friends. And one of the friends was one of the screenwriters for Cagney & Lacey, the first woman-centered cop show.
And her son was turning a year old, and she had a birthday, and they had a bunch of Hollywood women there. [00:19:00] And one of the women toasted, "May this war be over before our sons are of draft age." And from that one-year-old birthday party, they created Another Mother for Peace, the, the organization, the anti-war organization, that went to high school campuses to protest ROTC, and they succeeded in getting ROTC off of many high school campuses.
It's now illegal. And so they had this little miniature, and they wanted a logo, so they asked Lorraine. Lorraine gave them the rights. Uh, they blew it into a large poster. They made it into small piece of jewelry, patches, everything. The family and the Mother, Another Mother for Peace gave the Center for the Study of Political Graphics the right to reproduce it during the Iraq War.
People have been asking to reproduce it from the '60s to now, and so these posters, it's this one tool of the many tools that we have to [00:20:00] promote peace and justice. So anything that will m- literally make people either wanna get involved, to let them know how to get involved, or who weren't, never thought about getting involved but realize, "If not me, who?"If not now, when?
Nadeen Shaker: I think the example you gave just shows the ripple effects, right? About-
Carol Wells: Yes ...
Nadeen Shaker: how one thing can survive and push through decades. I wanna play devil's advocate for a moment and ask you this. I keep thinking a lot about modern conflicts, like the war in Palestine, for instance, where there obviously was a lot of art, political imagery, you know, symbols going around.
That did inspire people to take action, demonstrate, and all that, but it did not diffuse the political tension, right? It inspired action, but it wasn't a favorable outcome in the end.
Carol Wells: [00:21:00] Yes. The answer is yes, you're correct. But what has changed, and changed profoundly, is the conversation in this country. You have...are seeing on the corporate news, they are covering, and they're using the words genocide They're using the words genocide, many of them. They are showing the atrocities. And you have J- many different Jewish organizations, and rabbis, and synagogues taking a position in solidarity with Palestinians' right to exist, and opposing genocide.
So the conversation has clearly changed. The situation on the ground, unfortunately, has not. But the conversation has changed, and that gives me hope.
Nadeen Shaker: I did wanna ask you about the role of the peace poster in the digital age, and whether you think posters hold the same power in the digital age as the print age.
Carol Wells: The [00:22:00] making of them is certainly, it's adding to. It's not instead of, it's adding to another tool in the toolbox of how to make a poster. But the biggest difference I think it has made is in the distribution. One of the reasons we have so many old posters from places, all those bookstores that I was visiting back in the '80s and the '90s, was that they would make the posters, but they weren't, didn't have a really good way of getting them out to as many places or as many people as they needed.
Mm-hmm. And so they had a lot left over. What they're doing now, and you saw it, I think the first time I saw it was maybe around Occupy, in around, in 2011. And artists would put high-resolution posters that were free to, free downloads. Hmm. As long as they were not used for commercial purposes or against the intent.
But then they were free to use. So there are many, many places that are now offering free downloads, and you can pick [00:23:00] your own poster. You can make your own poster. And a lot of the... You can see a lot of that now at the No Kings Marches. People have downloaded professional post- They make their own, but they've also downloaded some that are very powerful.
And one of my favorite stories, this was during, um, Tahrir Square, during Arab Spring. There's an artist called, goes by the name Mr. Fish, and he did this, you know the famous Che Guevara, Korda photograph of Che Guevara? Well, he morphed it onto the famous portrait of King Tut. So he made it an Egyptian variation of Che, but King Tut.
And then it's, the title of it is Walk Like an Egyptian. It was this very pro-Tahrir Square, pro-Egyptian movement. And I'm at work, my husband calls me up and says, "Look at this poster, it's fabulous." I loved it. I thought it was great. I called up the editor and I said, "Can we get a copy of that?" She said, "Sure, just give us credit."
So we get a copy. [00:24:00] We have a Poster of the Week blog. We take one poster that we connect with a current event every week. So we put that on there. The next day, somebody took a photograph of that image on the streets of Cairo.
Nadeen Shaker: Wow, okay.
Carol Wells: In 24 hours, thanks to the internet, that image went from LA to the streets of Cairo.
Nadeen Shaker: Transcended continents, basically.
Carol Wells: In a day. And it was solidarity. It was an image of solidarity that blew me away. So the internet has, can be r- really used for our side as well.
Nadeen Shaker: Yeah, and I wanna play devil's advocate again.
Carol Wells: Go for it.
Nadeen Shaker: Like we said, we are living in a very volatile time. We're seeing all these conflicts, like seeing wars being documented on social media.
And I did wanna ask you if posters can evoke emotion or be as [00:25:00] impactful as those that show the horrors of war.
Carol Wells: Well, we've done a number of anti-war shows. Unfortunately, a lot of them. I'm always concerned of over-aestheticizing an exhibition. If an exhibition is too, has too many beautiful posters, it's not gonna have the same impact.
So I make sure in every room, if it's multi-room exhibition, or at least in every section, there's a photogra- at least one poster that shows dead and dying, that shows the reality, usually using a photo, like the My Lai Massacre, because that really horrifies people So I think you, you can't only have an exhibition that is just death and dying, 'cause people aren't gonna wanna see it.
They won't go. But if you combine [00:26:00] some really, uh, uh, but only if they're powerful, only if the messages are clear, and there's plenty of messages that are stunning and clear. So as, you, you need a, you need a balance. You need a balance of reality and beauty. At least that's how I choose to curate.
Nadeen Shaker: That's an interesting answer.I didn't expect it.
Carol Wells: What did you expect?
Nadeen Shaker: I thought you would side with the posters and just maybe talking about how the emotional connection with posters would have a larger impact than an image. But I guess you're right, because the examples that you did give do have images that are kind of designed in a way to make it a poster.
So there is that mix that you're talking about.
Carol Wells: I mean, a, a lot of times students will come to me and say, "How do I make a great poster?" And I say, "You know what? It doesn't even have to be a great poster to affect somebody, to impact [00:27:00] somebody. It's just being the right poster with the right messages at the right time with the person who just happens to see it who's ready for it."
And there is no formula for the right poster. You just gotta be as honest as you can be is what you gotta be. People do respond to honesty and directness and clarity.
Nadeen Shaker: Can posters create more peace in the world, in your opinion?
Carol Wells: I think they absolutely can, because they make people stop and think. They make people literally evaluate what their role is.
And especially, I mean, Howard Zinn's book, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, I've never seen a more time where it's, where you can't be neutral as now. And posters really challenge where you are and how you're thinking. And that's their role. Their role is to challenge you. That's why it's called a protest poster.
They're not to make you feel comfortable. They're literally intended to challenge how you look at the world and your role in [00:28:00] it. And once you start reexamining your role, it's like you can know and not care, but you can't care if you don't know.
HOST: That was artist, curator, and art historian Carol Wells, founder of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, speaking with Peace Talks Radio correspondent Nadeen Shaker.
Political posters have long given ordinary people a way to speak out against war, injustice, and oppression. But in the digital age, images can spread farther and faster than ever before. After the break, we'll hear the story behind one of the most recognizable symbols of solidarity in recent years, the watermelon.
We'll hear from Palestinian artist Khaled Hourani, whose artwork helped popularize the image around the world, and from researcher Elam Khan, who studied how the symbol spread across social media and what it reveals about the power of art and activism in the digital age. That's coming up. Stay tuned.
(Music Break)
I'm Jessica Ticktin, and this is Peace Talks Radio.[00:29:00] [00:30:00]
Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I'm Jessica Ticktin, today with correspondent Nadeen Shaker. In the digital age, symbols can spread around the world in an instant, inspiring solidarity, protest, and conversation. One of the most recognizable peace symbols to emerge in recent years is the watermelon.
Activists first began using the watermelon emoji to avoid social media platforms suppressing or shadow banning posts about Gaza and Palestine. Because the fruit shares the colors of the Palestinian flag, it quickly became a powerful visual shorthand. Soon, the symbol appeared far beyond social media, on fundraising artwork, taxi cabs in Tel Aviv, T-shirts and lapel pins worn by parliamentarians, national soccer jerseys, posters, murals, and countless [00:31:00] other works of art around the world.
Today's story traces one influential version of that symbol back to Palestinian artist Khaled Hourani, whose artwork helped shape the watermelon into an internationally recognized image of Palestinian identity and solidarity. Khaled Hourani is a Palestinian artist, curator, and co-founder of the International Academy of Art Palestine in Ramallah.
HOST: He also initiated the 2011 Picasso in Palestine project and the Stone Distance to Jerusalem. Correspondent Nadeen Shaker asks Khaled where the inspiration for his watermelon artwork began.
Khaled Hourani: The story which I inspired by, the story of the watermelon by an artist, uh, his name is Issam Badr
Nadeen Shaker: According to Hourani, Issam Badr and other artists were trying to get a permit to start an artist league in Ramallah, Palestine, and had this encounter with the Israeli officer
Khaled Hourani: He asked them not to do any [00:32:00] art which encourage people to do violence, and he was telling them not to draw the Palestinian flag, the color of the Palestinian flag, black, red, green, and white.
And Issam was asking him, "If we are going to draw a flower, let's say, it has the same color. Is it forbidden or not?" The officer himself says, "It's forbidden, and it's forbidden to do a watermelon." So I borrow this idea from the imagination of the officer himself, and I did it in 2007 as part of the Subjective Atlas, the watermelon as a flag.
Nadeen Shaker: I did see the section where different artists are depictating the flag of Palestine. So some artists have a faded image of the flag. Some have, uh, bread broken up into the- The bread ... yeah, contours of the flag, but you have the slice of [00:33:00] watermelon. So when you decided to do the watermelon, did you just remember that story, or how did that creative process happen?
Nadeen Shaker: How did you bring it to life?
Khaled Hourani: Yes. When the topic was about the flag, as you were saying, each artist, he did his own version. So I, I, I have this story in my background, and I was thinking I'm going to do something simple, as you can see in this atlas. And I start doing the watermelon after the Subjective Atlas as an art object in museums, in galleries, in the wall of the gallery.
Nadeen Shaker: A mural, yeah.
Khaled Hourani: It was produced there and in many different places later on. And for 10 years after I did it, it was not received well as I wish.
Nadeen Shaker: Hourani tells me that people didn't appreciate the story behind the creation of the watermelon artwork, [00:34:00] or that it was a demeaning way to represent the Palestinian flag.
So it wasn't that widely recognized until...
Khaled Hourani: It was used unexpected way during the war against Gaza
Nadeen Shaker: Do you remember the first time you saw it blow up, like you said, after the break of the war? Was it on social media or somewhere else?
Khaled Hourani: Of course, many journalists, art critique tried to contact me when it was in social media, and there was lot of people tried to find out what was the story behind, because the story itself, it gives the watermelon this kind of powerful meaning.
It was alternative solution for such censorship It was an, an alternative, uh, solution when it comes to do kind of solidarity with Palestinian wherever it's not allowed to use the Palestinian flag, [00:35:00] like in Germany, in, in other countries. Even at that time, it was not in my mind yet that the watermelon will be that much used in the demonstration all around the world, and it was, for me, something unexpected.
Nadeen Shaker: Can you, uh, give us examples of how it was used? Because people made stickers out of it, made campaigns out of it, and people have morphed it, reinvented it. So what are some of the ways that it's been used?
Khaled Hourani: First, it became one of the Palestinian symbol. And when they try to do something about Palestine, even normal people, not necessarily artists, they start using the watermelon to represent the Palestinian flag as an alternative.And so they did it in posters for cinema festival, for literature. It was used in T-shirt. It was used [00:36:00] in flags. It was used in embroidery. It was used now in Gaza for food agency for which give people food during the wartime. And they use it in different way as many artists start producing it in their own way.
People start doing it in 3D programs. They're doing it as an animation in videos. There's, how to say, thousand of thousand of images out of this watermelon. Some are using it for solidarity purpose, to do a flag, their own flag, even in a very simple way, to use it in the demonstration. Some people are doing it in graphic and use it in social media.
Nadeen Shaker: Hourani still sees the watermelon as a piece of art, despite it being used in global solidarity work.
Khaled Hourani: Thanks God there's still people who bring back the story of the [00:37:00] watermelon, bring back the art. I, I mean, it's part of an art practice. It's not only something come out of blue. It comes out of a very simple story, very simple image I did at Subjective Atlas of Palestine.
Nadeen Shaker: Now that it's out in the world, do you feel that it still reflects your intent? Your intent to make it was to talk about censorship and evading censorship. Do you feel that this still carries through despite having so many versions and coming to life in so many different ways? You know, what if someone takes the watermelon symbol and uses it in a divisive way or in a political way?
Does it matter to you?
Khaled Hourani: As I told you, it's something not easy to be controlled. When I told you the story behind the officer imagination about not doing the watermelon because it has the color of Palestine, he was never [00:38:00] think that this watermelon he was mention not to use, it was used as a Palestinian flag in Tel Aviv- in this war. When there's solidarity group who want to do kind of demonstration against the massacre in Gaza, and it was very sensitive to use the Palestinian flag directly in such war situation, so they use the watermelon. And, uh, for me, this is the maximum meaning Of this censorship. How art could find the alternative solution for such kind of decision, not to use the national color of the national flag.
And how art could help to find a solution, and it's, uh, in a funny way. When you hear the story, it makes you laugh than being sad. Uh, and this is I think why my son, he's, uh, now [00:39:00] 24, he, he was one of the people who used the watermelon that much in social media. For him, out of 12 different art projects I did, the watermelon is the best.
Nadeen Shaker: Okay. Yeah, it has a big impact on the youth, for sure.
Khaled Hourani: Yes. And this is why it was succeed because of the youth, not because of the artist.
Nadeen Shaker: Mm-hmm.
Khaled Hourani: It was success because people who love stories behind artworks, this was the hero of the artwork itself. The story, it's funny, it's very simple, and you can tell it to your kid.
Nadeen Shaker: I love that. I, I wanna talk a little bit about the posters version of the watermelon, how it was in posters. Do you feel that the watermelon posters that were spreading online like wildfire changed the perception of the war on Gaza?
Khaled Hourani: Of course, art might [00:40:00] not give a direct solution for such complicated issues, like this kind of historically political conflict between Palestinians and the Israelis because of the occupation, but it might help later on.
And I will say, it gives lot of people to do such kind of soft solidarity with Palestinian from where they are. I, I think this is how art could be helpful in such situation. When we live in this kind of dark time and people, they couldn't do that much things to stop this war. What they can do, they can announce, they can make their voice louder.
They can do their own statement that they want this war to come to an end, and they ask to change the situation. Art in such case, it's a very good example of [00:41:00] how we can find ways to find solution for complicated issue.
HOST: That was Nadeen Shaker speaking with Khaled Hourani, Palestinian artist and curator.
Next, Nadeen speaks with Elam Khan, a graphic designer, researcher, and lecturer at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. She was one of many seeing the images and posters of the watermelon on her social media feed.
Nadeen Shaker: Do you remember the first poster you saw that used the watermelon symbol and how you reacted to it?
Iiam Khan: I think one of the first posters that I saw, it had the watermelon, and there's lots of, like, iterations of this poster, so I can't exa- remember the exact one. But it was this idea of the watermelon slice and rockets that were falling into the watermelon, so it was almost the seeds of the watermelon that resembled the rockets.
And I just [00:42:00] thought that was such a powerful poster or visual because already as a graphic designer, you could kind of see the deeper meaning behind it and the concept, which was that the watermelon represented the people or the land of Palestine, and these seeds that were then breaking into the watermelon, destroying the people and their land.
Uh, so that was one of the first posters that I actually saw. Mm-hmm.
Nadeen Shaker: And you produced a paper called Seeds of Freedom, where you analyze posters that incorporate the watermelon icon. Can you tell us how you became interested in watermelon posters?
Iiam Khan: In my particular case, I was feeling quite helpless when the whole issue sort of rose.
Obviously, I grew up as a young Muslim knowing about Palestine, knowing about the struggles that the people of Palestine were going through. But then obviously after what happened on October 7th, I was feeling quite helpless in that [00:43:00] situation. And the more my colleague and I sat with it, the more we realized th- there's something that we can add here.
And that's how we then started to notice that the watermelon kind of exploded, and the meaning that it then had. And that's what then drew us into this particular topic, is trying to develop a sense of what exactly does this watermelon mean, and how does it have a deeper meaning than just an emoji on your phone or on social media?
Nadeen Shaker: And then what made you want to document or explore all these other posters that you started seeing, the watermelon iconography?
Iiam Khan: So we went back and forth with what was the best take on this, how could we showcase this, and we obviously struggled because we couldn't find work from designers in Palestine given the circumstances.
And we then came [00:44:00] across the Palestine Poster Project, and we went through all of their different options under iconography. And g- given what we were seeing on social media and the rise of the watermelon, that's what then made us look deeper into the watermelon itself. Our sort of angle was looking at it more from a social media stance as well.
Nadeen Shaker: Interesting. And I remember these watermelon posters being everywhere on my feed. You just couldn't escape it, and even news outlets were picking up on it and explaining to audiences what it meant. Can you give us a sense of the scale of how widespread it became, especially on social media?
Iiam Khan: So I think, in order to answer that question, I think you would have to have a deep understanding of how social media algorithms work.
So for both myself, and like you mentioned, it was all over your feed as well, that would be given because of our algorithm and what we were being fed. [00:45:00] So the scale on my side was quite a deep reach, whereas for other people they might not have seen it immediately, 'cause it does depend on that particular person's search history-
Nadeen Shaker: Yeah
Iiam Khan: and where they stand within this whole, um, sort of situation that was unfolding.
Nadeen Shaker: I think part of why eventually- It exploded to much larger audiences was because it was able to circumvent the social media algorithm, right, that restricted pro-Palestine content. And I... Maybe I wanted to ask you if you have a sense of how that happened and why it's important.
Iiam Khan: Definitely. That's something we spoke about in our paper is that this little symbol of a watermelon could bypass all of the restrictions that were being put in place to restrict the content that was being shared.
And by having any hashtags that said pro-Palestine, your work was [00:46:00] almost shadowbanned.
And this little watermelon symbol, because it was just a fruit, could circumvent any of the shadowbanning, which is part of the reason it exploded more than the flag did, um, because the flag was something that people could immediately pick up, whereas this little watermelon symbol was a way to just get past it.
And in our paper as well, there is also a section where we speak about within Israel, how a company sort of circumvented the restriction on not being pro-Palestine, and just they weren't allowed to display the Palestinian flag, and then they literally stuck a sticker of a watermelon on the side of a van and said, "This is not a Palestinian flag," but still showed their solidarity with the people of Palestine.
And that's just a real world example of something that has exploded over social media just by simply being a fruit and people giving it a [00:47:00] symbolic meaning.
Nadeen Shaker: Yeah, that's a great example. I did wanna go back to you explaining how you did your content analysis and, you know, most of the posters originated from international artists or agencies and were distributed online and they're in English.
What does that mean to you? What does it tell you?
Iiam Khan: So that's a really interesting question because when we initially looked at it, firstly we went onto the Palestinian Poster Project Archive, um, which is a digital archival site with all of these posters that has to have the word Palestine in it.
Nadeen Shaker: Mm-hmm.
Iiam Khan: We then searched under the iconography of just simply the watermelon, and then- We started collecting these posters. We gave ourselves a set date, which was from October 2023, and then we collected this body of work. And it was very interesting for us because we just from the offset thought this would [00:48:00] be posters produced by people in Palestine.
Nadeen Shaker: Mm-hmm.
Iiam Khan: And after doing further research, we noticed that it was mostly international artists.
Nadeen Shaker: Mm.
Iiam Khan: And that was a completely different take because it created this idea of people were now becoming more aware of the situation, and there was this rise in international solidarity, which you can still see today with the flotillas, with all of the different activists from all over the world.
And it's just such a beautiful thing to see that people are now taking a stand against all of the atrocities that are being committed, even in the smallest sense of creating a poster, and it just creates a bigger community that can take on all of these issues in the world.
Nadeen Shaker: I guess in your paper you analyzed the different meanings that, uh, the watermelon symbol has come to take in posters.
Can you tell us some of the meanings you've discovered?
Iiam Khan: Um, so [00:49:00] again, there was a lot of things that we picked up. So what we did was we took these 408 posters that had the watermelon symbol in them, obviously confining them within our timeframe. We then started to separate these out into How was the watermelon represented?
And we came up with four key concepts, which was the watermelon that basically stood in for the Palestinian flag, the watermelon that was then perpetuating the body, then the land of Palestine itself, and then as a weapon. Mostly the watermelon seems to be shown as a triangle, which is reminiscent of the triangle in the Palestinian flag.
So it goes a little bit deeper than just the colors. And then as the people, it usually takes on the form of the female body in particular. So usually it's a [00:50:00] woman, a protector, a mother, someone who's very connected to the land. It's usually a woman that's weeping or carrying a child that has been wounded.
So that is as the land or as the flesh. And in some instances, the seeds become the people. There's one example that I can think of right now, which was the watermelon segment, and inside it was the way that Muslim people wrap their deceased, which is in the white cloth. And instead of the seeds, it was pictures of those white pieces of cloth as the humans were wrapped in it.
And it just shows the connection between the watermelon, between the people, between the land. So the seeds, even if they destroy the watermelon, the seeds will re- be replanted and they'll still be there.
Nadeen Shaker: Mm-hmm.
Iiam Khan: And then as a weapon, you could s- say that the watermelon point [00:51:00] itself could be described as a wea- weapon, because in some posters it's very sharp.
In other posters it has almost blood dripping off it, which could also be the juice, but it looks like blood.
There's other posters that showcase the watermelon being used as a pebble within a slingshot.
Iiam Khan: So it replaces that pebble There's also a design which has a depiction of a superhero called Palestina, which is a female superhero, and she's holding a watermelon in her hand, almost ready to throw it.
Nadeen Shaker: Interesting.
Iiam Khan: And there's also a couple of posters which are slightly more humorous. So there's one where it's a IDF soldier, and you just see this watermelon that's been flung at him, and he's sort of toppling over.
Iiam Khan: So it showcases the watermelon as a weapon as well. So those were the four main fields that we discovered.
Nadeen Shaker: Uh, I [00:52:00] wanted to ask you more specifically about the general symbolism or meaning the watermelon has come to take. So you write that the watermelon has been an object of defiance since 1967 specifically because Palestinian flags were banned from public display then. How has it taken a different meaning, in your opinion, after it spread on social media or gained popularity after 2023?
Iiam Khan: I think it's also a way for people to show solidarity with a particular cause without outright saying it.
And given the climate that we're in right now, that's almost problematic for some people to say, "I'm pro-Palestine," because they could lose their jobs or their visas could be in trouble or travel bans could be put into place.
And even though back then it obviously was a means of defiance, it still is. I think that [00:53:00] meaning is still there, and it's just continued with a dif- different generation on different platforms. I don't think it's necessarily something that's changed its meaning. It's still an object of defiance whichever way you look at it.
Nadeen Shaker: For some people, like you said, it's still a symbol of resistance, a gesture towards peace in a time where it's very polarizing to, to speak up. But it does also spur up these negative emotions, and it could be, could also be the opposite of peace, right? So do you think that the watermelon symbol can function as both a form of resistance and a gesture towards peace, or are those things in tension with each other?
Iiam Khan: I will say that- When it is used by the people to showcase that they are pro-Palestine, I don't think they're necessarily trying to incite any form of [00:54:00] violence. I think the people that take up an issue with this, again, it's the same way of showing an Israeli flag. If you had an Israeli flag on a hoodie or something, it doesn't necessarily mean y- you're trying to incite violence, and it's just a symbol.
Everything that people are putting onto it, those are their own views. Those are their own feelings. It's just a symbol of a watermelon. So yes, sometimes maybe someone is trying to be more malicious with it, but I think if you look back at the reason it was created, you need to consider the fact that it was created because there were these restrictions.
And were these restrictions put onto the other side? So again, it's not necessarily inciting violence, it's just trying to create a community, create a sense of belonging.
Nadeen Shaker: Mm-hmm. And on the note of belonging, earlier in the [00:55:00] interview you said that you became interested in the watermelon posters because you felt so helpless watching the war unfold in Palestine, and then you, in your research, you realized that all these artists were also responding in solidarity.
Iiam Khan: I definitely think it became an easier way to sort of wrap your head around everything that was going on. I think art and design have such an important role to play in everything in our lives. We look at almost every place of conflict, we look at the designs that called people to serve in the army, that called people to stand up against the army.
Design played a role in everything. And I think firstly, it's important to note that design is a major part in all of this, and artists, just by simply creating a watermelon, can help people wrap their heads around something that's happening without having to look at [00:56:00] the actual photographs. It's a way to disseminate information while still respecting the dignity of those affected.
Nadeen Shaker: You know, obviously you think that protest art can create solidarity, but do you think it can push past- Political conflicts, or they, are they just relegated to the space of being symbols?
Iiam Khan: I think because again, poster art is a form of communication design. So if you look at every conflict area, there's always some form of poster art, and it doesn't necessarily have to be high-end digital work.
And I think that was the important thing to pick up with these watermelon posters as well, is that anything can become resistance posters. And one of the most important things was like just slapping the picture of the watermelon on it, not needing any text, not needing this work to be printed. You could just put it on a piece of card, [00:57:00] and that was a resistance poster.
I think that is a powerful sort of statement to have, where you can beat these systems that have all the money to sort of shadowban your work. But then you could go out into the streets and stick a little sticker of a watermelon on a pole, and someone could take it and then re-share it online. But I think the idea of a resistance poster has changed form.
I think in the past we always had this idea that it had to be a physical poster, and then it became something that was placed onto social media. And now it's gone even further, where you could have a little metal pin that was a watermelon. You could have a emoji that is a watermelon. You could have a sticker that is a watermelon.
And you could place these all over the world in the real world on the dig- digital sphere as well, and it's still a resistance poster. So I don't think it's just art. I definitely don't [00:58:00] think it's just art and it's just a symbol and it just lives there. I think it has the capacity to move people like art does, and it has the capacity to make them feel something and to hopefully get out there, or at the very least re-share something online so more and more viewers see it.
And hopefully more people are sort of reading up about the situations and taking a stand instead of just looking at something and walking away
HOST: That was Palestinian artist Khaled Hourani and researcher Ilam Khan speaking with Peace Talks Radio correspondent Nadeen Shaker. To learn more about our guests and this program, visit us at peacetalksradio.com.
Support for Peace Talks Radio comes from listeners like you and the McCune Foundation. For correspondent Nadeen Shaker and co-founders Paul Ingles and Suzanne Kryder, I'm Jessica Ticktin. Thanks for listening to and for supporting Peace Talks Radio.
