Al Ma’mal invited me to paint a mural. We discussed where and what scale but because a mural in the city would have to be erased after the Jerusalem Show, they decided that it should actually be painted on the wall at the entrance to Al-Ma’mal itself. I said that ideally I would like to work with a group of young people and they said OK. We tried to find a group to work with in Jerusalem but it didn’t quite work with the project so Al Ma’mal suggested I work with students from the International Academy of Art, Palestine, in Ramallah.
At this point the working title for the piece was Just another hole in the wall, a reference to the Pink Floyd album The Wall. However, the students were not granted permits to come to Jerusalem to work on the project so there had to be a change of plan. This was really the beginning of being here for me. Al Ma’mal said they could try and find another group in Jerusalem but I said no. The Ramallah students can’t come here but I can go to them so that was how the title of this collaborative project became Back and Forth to
The plain wall is small for a mural but because Al Ma’mal refers to the Tile Factory I thought about using tiles and for this, the wall is big. So this could shift the scale of the wall and connect to the Factory at the same time.
