A Palestinian artist turns tools of destruction into works of terrifying beauty.
Palestinian artist Eid Suleiman Hadaleen has a strange affection for bulldozers. In his workshop in the West Bank Bedouin village of Um Al Khayr in the South Hebron Hills, Hadaleen’s scale model bulldozer sculpture idles on a table by the door. Painted banana yellow, with an articulating blade, reflective mirrors, red flags, and the CAT logo emblazoned on its side, the sculpture looks ready to fire up its engine and go to work. Another bulldozer in progress reveals innards of recycled plastic, wire, and scrap metal.
Hadaleen’s sculptures seem surprising not only as works of art – is there so much beauty in a bulldozer? – but because in Um Al Khayr, a bulldozer is a monstrous thing.
Read the whole story from 2012 in the Jerusalem Report.
Samuel Thrope 