The Palestinians are coming

Made in Palestine, the first exhibition of contemporary Palestinian art in the U.S., is on view at the Bridge, 521 West 26th Street, through April 22. I went to the raucous opening on Thursday night and returned for the artists' panel on Friday night.

Made in Palestine is a curious throwback to the political and identity art of the mid-1990s. The original show was organized in Houston, which is home to some 25,000 Palestinians, in response to 9/11, and was double the size of the New York show. The exhibition has generated controversy - its name alone will make some people bristle - particularly when curator James Harithas tried to move it to another city.

The work itself is quite varied, and not surprisingly, the most overtly political pieces tend to attract the most attention. One example is A Time to Cast Stones, an ammunition box that contains stones, by Rajie Cook. A former graphic designer and the son of Palestinian parents, Cook uses stones, keys, and keffiyehs as visual shorthand for the Palestinian struggle. As you might expect from someone who spent his career in advertising and corporate communications, each of his pieces packs an immediate message, and so he could be called the most activist of the artists on view.

By contrast, Samia Halaby's abstract paintings are inspired by nature and are more a product of her training - she studied art in the U.S. - and her influences. For me, this was a truer glimpse of Palestinian art; although Halaby has spent much of her career promoting Palestinian art, she is more interested in the conditions under which it is created than with communicating a specific message.

John Halaka, an American of Egyptian descent, struggles with the diaspora of the Palestinian people from a distance. His drawings and paintings rely on figurative metaphors for displacement and instability.

Mary Tuma, another American of Palestinian descent, is interested in the experience of women. Her long black dresses, suspended from the ceiling and trailing on the floor in a funereal procession, are one of the highlights of the show.