In the fall of 2022, the Kafr Bara Cultural Center (Community Center) hosted the comics workshop of the unique A7 group. The exhibition “A7” (الف٧) presents a collection of photographs documenting the creative and learning process, alongside images from two books created from the works of workshop participants in Kafr Bara and Tur’an—children aged 10–14.
The A7 group, led by Avishag and Rani Lebanon (Isabella and Glendon), and based on collaboration between Jewish and Arab artists, offers an original and direct approach to learning and creating comic art together. The initiators held five meetings in which participants created local stories through images and writing in various communities.
The popularity of comic art finds a natural home in the community center—a place where everyone can belong and everyone is given the opportunity to participate. Residents, staff, parents, and children: the audience of consumers becomes the audience of creators; viewers become exhibitors.
Comic art contains a freedom of expression and creation that emerges from the combination of imagination and dream. The use of sequential visual storytelling as a means of human expression began as early as prehistoric cave paintings, continued through Egyptian hieroglyphics, and exists today in the emojis we send each other to express emotions and associations. Since its birth in the 19th century, comics sought to express rich inner worlds and social critique through sequences of drawn images—far removed from the art displayed at that time in salons and museums. Today, however, comics are considered one of the groundbreaking genres, like photography and cinema, that transformed the face of art as a whole.
Avishag and Rani Lebanon explain:
“On the ideological level, the workshop is based on a pluralistic principle (no selection process): every creative expression is allowed and possible. On the technical level, there is a clear evolutionary order: grid, booklet, book. The grid (the skeleton of the illustrations) is an A4 page containing 16 frames (a frame is a segment of a drawn story), numbered in a non-linear way. The booklet consists of 16 pages created after cutting and assembling sections of the A4 page, and the book is a collection of all the booklets created by the group participants, combined with photographs from the workshops and the working process.”
A7 Group: Avishag and Rani Lebanon
Workshop Facilitators in Kafr Bara: Avishag Lebanon and Faten Abu Ali
Artist Workshop in Kafr Bara (color works): Faten Abu Ali
Workshop Facilitators in Tur’an: Avishag Lebanon and Rahma Hamza
Artist Workshop in Tur’an (color works): Charlotte Shama