So, I’ve not produced as much art as I’d wished of late, though my interest, ideas and picture taking continue quite strongly. The latest political focus is of course the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which itself has produced some artistic ideas I hope to flesh out sooner rather than later. So it was bitter sweet that my piece on the Irish famine was referenced by the great activist Kathy Kelly in her recent piece, “When Starvation Is a Weapon, the Harvest Is Shame” for The Progressive.
She writes:
In a work entitled “Irish Famine 4,” Palestinian-American journalist and artist Sam Husseini combined grass and paint to commemorate a bitter time in Irish history when starving people died with their mouths stained green because, according to historian Christine Kinealy, their last meal was grass. Shamefully, British occupiers profited from exporting out of Ireland the food crops so desperately needed. During a seven-year period beginning in 1845, one million Irish people died from starvation and related diseases. It was a deliberate mass killing, employing one of the most horrific means of execution imaginable—an excruciating descent of weeks’ duration into despair, delirium, and bodily immobility while one’s attention, one’s character, is gradually reduced to little more than appetite and pain. …
Now, in the occupied Gaza Strip, as weapons dealers benefit from increasing military shipments to Israel, Palestinians have resorted to eating mixtures of grass and animal feed. The past five months of Israeli siege, bombing, and displacement have killed more than 31,000—mostly women and children—but a process of famine long underway is clearly about to expand that number exponentially, particularly among children. …
“This year’s famine walk will focus on the unspeakable horrors being visited on the population of Gaza,” says Action From Ireland’s coordinator, Joe Murray, “with ‘Irish’ President Biden forgetting his history and playing the part of a ‘Black and Tan’ in providing the means to obliterate an entire population.”…
See piece: “St. Patrick's Day & Palestinians Eating Grass in Gaza.”