Courtesy of Néstor Hernández
Néstor Hernández ‘25 and I are sitting on the floor of the white box in Cummings, glass shards strewn around us, as we puzzle over the shattered mirror between us. It’s Sunday, and the white box has now been transformed into a site of Palestinian art and resistance against occupation for three days. I should clarify– the mirror was pre-shattered, and prominently hung as a centerpiece on the wall, plastered with the jagged cut-out faces of the current U.S. president, vice president, and president-elect– but this time, it’s a bit more broken than how I’d last seen it.
“A bit about myself– I’m an Art major senior, and I come from an immigrant background, queer– a lot of circulating identities,” Hernández starts to contextualize. “Whether one wants to be political or not, a lot of my identities become political just by existing. This whole semester I’ve been having trouble with my senior art project, ‘cause I couldn’t just draw for me, couldn’t draw just some silly doodles like I used to do. It felt wrong– because of the genocide in Palestine, because of the effort I’ve been putting into learning and relearning it. With this learning and relearning process, I realized I don’t have to make these two separate issues; they’re all one and the same.”
When I first walked in, Hernández had asked me what I made of the situation– the mirror shards scattered across the compact room, far from where they’d been secured to the frame. Neither of us can prove tampering– the mirror could’ve been accidentally jostled– but the situation doesn’t look very innocent, and I don’t fault his assumption. The white box is open for art students to schedule and create exhibitions, where students can come by at any hour to see. Hernández and seven other students—Xenia Berna ‘25, Leila Merhi ‘25, Emily Nelson ‘25, Lucy Morrison ‘26, Dani Then ‘25, Adismel Santana ‘25, and myself—including organizers from CC Students in Solidarity With Palestine, set up the white box in only a few days.
“We have the privilege to be in a university, whereas a lot of Palestinians don’t get to have that choice anymore—some will never get their diploma, some have diplomas with universities that no longer exist,” Hernández comments, as we discuss our privilege even to be in a space like the white box. “I didn’t plan this to take place post-election—but I’m genuinely glad it did, because I want people to pay attention. There’s so many people this past year [that] I’ve seen claim they don’t like posting on their platform or getting political, but now, post-election, because of the person who is going to sit in office very soon—because these people are actually going to be affected—now they can get political.”
The walls are covered in a wrapping, extensive timeline spanning from the late 1800s to 2024, spelling out the history of occupation in Palestine in marker and paint. Far above and below it, abandoned clothing pieces are hung and shoes are lined against the wall. From the ceiling and in the corners, markedly empty water jugs are suspended. On the main wall, a bouquet of flowers tied with a keffiyeh sits below the mirror, framed by photos of protests and Palestinian poems. All around me, kites made of poetry and art of resistance hang in the air. A cut out under the mirror frames the broken face of the viewer above the shoulders of Uncle Sam– sprawling texts above it all reads: “I want you to stay complicit in genocide. Sharpies tied to the wall encourage students to write: “I will not,” and leave messages and emotions for future visitors to read. The sounds of warplanes from a speaker echo around the room.
“I wanted this mirror that we’re fixing–,” Hernández speaks on as the clattering sounds of us organizing shards continue, “ —to help reflect all this post-election—with the smaller images of Trump’s face, who is easy to see as evil, but also with Biden and Harris, who don’t get to get away with genocide just because they’re liberal, and for voters who don’t get to get away with voting for pro-genocide candidates without acknowledging the consequences. I’m hoping at least with this new, shitty president that affects everyone, not just black and brown people, undocumented people, we can all work together.”
There’s a pause, and some laughter, as we’re now really struggling with the hot glue. I ask him what he thinks about Conn’s responsibility, and how students should feel about their place in their university, their country, and their world. More specifically, I ask what I’ve heard students asking over the past year: what responsibility do we hold in regards to Palestine?
“For folks that ask that question, the biggest thing they’re missing is history. Institutions, universities, colleges—” another pause, and some hmms, because I’ve misglued a piece “ —they’ve always been political, whether people like it or not, because of where our money and investments go. After these ten months, after trying to work with the Conn Board of Trustees, we’ve been asking them just to do again what we did with divesting from South African apartheid, with divesting from the fossil fuel industry– it’s affirming seeing how many people have attended this white box. I see people coming in and out, visiting twice just to see it again, because it is making an impact. It’s a reminder of how much students, faculty, and staff actually do care.”
The mirror is glued back together, if only haphazardly, the now disorderly collage overlapping and twisting to evoke a sense of its original border of flowers and vines. He sticks back on the cut-up pictures of faces we’ve seen daily over the past year, years, decade. We both brush the paint dust off our pants and look around for a minute– the exhibit is inspiring, and beautiful, and tragic, and awful, and evokes every emotion that effective art should. I think back to Hernández’s comment from earlier, one he emphasized the most:
“I want people leaving this white box and coming out of it not feeling better about themselves but thinking: ‘Okay– what do I do now?’”
