Listening to the Unheard / Drawing the Unseen: Meditations on Presence and Absence in Native Lands

This new exhibition showcases San Diego-based visual artist John Halaka’s visual meditations on experiences of forced displacement and indigenous survival in the face of colonial erasure.

The exhibition features artwork selected from two related projects: drawings from Landscapes of Resistance honor the creative efforts of Native American, African American, and Palestinian artists, activists, and scholars; while drawings for Forgotten Survivors are informed by oral history interviews he recorded with Palestinian refugees. Through his work, Halaka strives to visualize the tensions between the emotional presence and physical absence of populations whose cultures have been devastated by the violent intrusions of settler-colonialism.