The Art of Weeping:
Drawings by Mary Hazboun

Mary Hazboun’s Bio:

Mary Hazboun is a multidisciplinary Chicago-based Palestinian artist. Her work “The Art of Weeping” explores the processing of grief and the somatic healing of bodies through drawing. She was born and raised in the city of Bethlehem and moved to the U.S. in 2004. She graduated from DePaul University in 2017 with a Masters degree in Women’s and Gender Studies. Mary’s work highlights the nuanced traumas of women and their resistance against different forms of oppression manifested in the military industrial complex, patriarchal societies, and forced migrations. She uses art as a way of resolving blocked emotions, opening internal spaces, and adopting trauma-informed introspections as a form of healing.” 

Mary Hazboun’s Artist Statement:

“While a graduate student in Women’s and Gender Studies at DePaul University in 2015, I started doodling in class to ease the trauma flashbacks I was experiencing while reading course materials that discussed military and gendered violence. Doodling was a way for me to avoid having to leave the classroom due to being triggered. Months later, my doodles turned into sketches, and as a result, a collection of over forty complete art pieces came to life. “The Art of Weeping” collection emerged slowly, as I was grappling with multiple traumas having lived under Israeli military occupation for twenty-one years, and later forced to migrate to the U.S in 2004.

My drawings highlight the complex and multilayered traumas of women and their resistance against the intersecting systems of oppression manifested in the military industrial complex, patriarchal societies, and forced migrations. My work is an act of decolonizing these bodies, including my own, as well as a creative form of struggle against oppression, through transgressing boundaries, making trauma visible, and linking it with collective and ancestral traumas.  

 My sketches have a narrative feature that recalls the complex emotions of these events. The empty backgrounds direct the viewers’ attention to the figures that are constrained within a military occupied space. The viewer must study the body language and facial expressions to gain an idea of what it means to live in a militarized zone, the resistance within the bodies, and how these meanings can be applied to other militarized zones such as Iraq, Kashmir, and Syria. So, in many ways, the viewers who see my art can relate and connect to these images depending on their location. In my work, I aim to make the trauma visible in the cramped postures representing the physical, mental, and emotional restraints they are experiencing. This near deformity occurs when bodies are situated in spaces caught between multiple forces that collectively restrain and reduce them, where their motion and mobility are restricted.

 “The Art of Weeping” is unapologetically about grief; it is an invitation to start a conversation about mental health, and an in-depth exploration of how trauma shapes our bodies and psyches following traumatic experiences. It is about allowing ourselves to fully experience our grief and create a space for our heartbrokenness. It is also about cultivating resilience and hope, and uplifting women’s voices.