(gentle music) - [Alessandra] The San Diego region is home to many artists who work in an assortment of media.

As a Curator and Educator, I want to know what inspires these creatives.

This is "Insights Into Art."

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle music) (birds chirping) On this episode of "Insights Into Art," I'm meeting with artist, Doris Bittar.

(gentle music) (birds chirping) Doris is passionate about the plight of the Palestinian people, and has created an evolving art installation made from found or discarded objects, called "Gaza is Key."

- It's a piece I began at the onset of the October 7th, 2023, and it could be finished at any point.

I could declare it finished today, I could have declared it finished a few months ago.

It's a large piece, and there's an element of community engagement, like people can glue things on, things I call "debris," found objects, plastic you might see on the sidewalk, to kind of bear witness to what's going on there, and the total destruction of the area, and the idea of debris, and there's even artists making things out of broken plaster, and fabric in Gaza.

So it's called "Gaza is Key," and it's a giant key with the word in Arabic, "Gaza" in the sky.

And it's a landscape, and the land is full of debris.

There's also 2,000 names of people who have died on the piece.

And so those are things that, again, I could keep adding, because it's much more than that now, and so it's my way of sort of keeping vigil.

And we don't know exactly what it is we should be doing, but we're doing, signing petitions, we're protesting, we're pressuring our elected leaders to pay attention and end this.

And we're also making art, because honestly, sometimes that reaches more people.

- What are some of the elements that you bring into your artwork that are part of your culture?

- Well, I was really interested in pattern and decoration.

And then- - I see the beautiful pattern here.

- Yes.

Yeah, I designed this.

(participants laughing) Yeah, pattern is something I'm interested in in a very broad way, and the pattern, fortunately, the pattern from the Arab world and the Islamic world is pattern that usually comes from somewhere else, as well.

So I call those patterns "migrating patterns."

And I had a whole exhibit that was titled that.

And so I've been studying patterns, especially those that may have originated in China or Africa, and how they converged in the Arab world.

Byzantiums, patterns, the mosaics, the Arab, Muslim people just took those and said, "These are ours."

And then they reconfigured them into these sort of hybrid, synthesized images that make Islamic and Arab art look very unique, very distinct, but it all has sources.

So I'm very interested in that migration.

I don't just use patterns straight, I wonder if I could turn them into a lattice, and see how they overlap.

And if you move this way, you move that way, it's a new pattern, and you know, I'm a bit obsessed with that.

- Maybe we can go in your studio, and actually see the piece, and see a little bit about your process.

- Absolutely.

- Thank you.

(gentle music) - So this is where I work, there's my piece, and this area here is kind of like the incubator of... - Of ideas.

- Layering, the idea of patterns being layered one over the other, and seeing what new things can come, and I spend a lot of time doing this sort of thing, you know, and aside from the collage aspect, I'm also interested in relief, you know, shallow relief, and like the text piece up there, and you know- - Or even here where you're actually taking a sheet, and you're- - Exactly.

- Creating a cone shape.

- And this is ready to be framed, but I have to find the proper frame, and figure out the depth, and the lighting, and so these are some of the places I shuffle things around to see what I can discover.

It's in the interest of turning patterns into lattice, layering them, perhaps having a gap between one pattern, and the pattern behind it, and seeing how I could sort of weave, literally weave things into it, and so sometimes these are become shallow relief drawings, or paper cuttings.

It's all in the interest of learning more about the pattern, and perhaps coming up with a new pattern, which I have come up with new patterns based on old patterns.

And more recently, I've been interested in landscapes.

My large drawings of which this "Gaza is Key" is one of them, becomes this vast landscape.

- So let's go see the piece.

- Yeah.

- I see that one important part of this work, kind of a focal piece is the key.

And I wanted you to tell us a little bit about the symbolism of that element.

- Yes.

The key is super important in Palestinian history, it's a symbol of returning to their homes, maybe not their actual homes, but that's really what it means.

During the Nakba, the exodus, the forced displacement, many took their keys, thinking, and their deeds, thinking they would return, and be able to just open the door of their homes.

And so the key is very important, so it's a key floating in the sky, defying gravity, and with the words "Gaza," (Doris speaking in foreign language) And so that's the word "Gaza" there, and here too as an edifice, and attached to a key.

(gentle music) You know, there's a surreal element to this, of things floating, and names floating, and names looking like edifice, or like clouds, or you know, that's- - Or constellations, or, yeah, yeah.

- Yeah.

I got this from the Chicago Federal Reserve.

There's even shredded US dollars.

All the green parts are US dollar bills, I created a missile out of that one, and you know, they get rid of a lot of money, and they shred it, and then they give it to you for free in a little packet.

- Oh, I didn't realize that.

- And the horizon is the US dollar bills is where the horizon is.

And as I fill it in, the landscape aspects of this will become a little more clear, you know, making that look like you're going back in space, and this being very close up.

- And you were talking earlier about how as an activist, you know, you go on protests and other things, but also a piece like this, you know, art can also reach more people in different ways, and make them connect with it.

- That's right.

Yes.

- So how does that work in either this piece or other example?

- You know, when I use something, I feel it quite deeply, but that doesn't mean my audience does.

So it's how I apply it.

And in the past, I often used very precious, romantic, decorative images, but then I juxtapose them with something like a ruined landscape, or something that suggests in an abstracted way, you know, a refugee camp or something like that.

But those decorative aspects really have to be beautiful.

I'm not sure this is quite there yet in that sense, but have to draw you in, and pull you in, for whatever reason, and I've had people cry at my art openings, I mean, and just like lose it, and begin to understand what's going on from that emotional response.

You never know until it's up, and it's exposed to the public how they're gonna react.

But I have gotten a lot of emotional reactions, and people who resist wanting to hear about Palestinians, or Gaza, or people who resist that a lot.

"I got to protect myself, or those people are terrorists," or whatever they're thinking about.

And so if you peel back some of that fear through the work you're doing, your commitment to it, maybe employing beauty, like pattern is often beautiful, usually, then it's allure, and they engage, and maybe they could be more open.

Yeah, we'll see.

We'll see.

It's not the only thing I work on, I do other things, I'm curious about other patterns, but this will be up here probably for a while, and then it'll leave, it'll come back, and I'm gonna keep working on it, I think.

- [Alessandra] As an artist activist, the work that Doris creates is deeply personal, and I appreciate her openness and candor in sharing her process.

Thank you, Doris.

(gentle music ending)