In this Mother and Child painting “Motherhood” (1995), the landscape is reduced to an arch of vines. The peasant woman’s embroidered dress has lost its regional specificity and has been replaced with the four colours of the Palestinian flag. Palestine as the Motherland was a space of nurturing and sustenance and the relationship between homeland and subject is one of maternal love. The Motherland is associated with ideas of Mother Earth and Nature and creates an image of the richness and reproductivity of the land and a cyclical way of life. The image of the Motherland dominated Palestinian literature and was a popular motif for articulating the relationship and the longing for the lost homeland. The Motherland is a utopia of bodily comfort, where the subject’s emotional and physical needs are met, as eulogised in the late Mahmoud Darwish’s poem, Give Birth to Me Again that I May Know: ‘Give birth to me again so I can drink the country’s milk from you and remain a little boy in your arms, remain a little boy forever […] Give birth to me again so you can hold me in your hands. ’The poet’s focus on exile, estrangement and loss of the homeland are expressed as separation from the mother. In this Mother and Child Painting, the theme of the Motherland recurs throughout Anani’s oeuvre and he returns to it again and again, across the decades of his practice. (b. 1943, Latroun, Palestine) Nabil Anani is a key founder of the contemporary Palestinian art movement. Anani studied Fine Art at Alexandria University, Egypt, in 1969. On his return to Palestine, he began a career as an artist and an art teacher-trainer at the UN college in Ramallah. Anani held his first exhibition in Jerusalem in 1972 and has since exhibited widely in solo and group shows in Europe, North America, the Middle East, North Africa and Japan. His works can be found in many museums and private collections.