Liberate Gaza: For Your Viewing Pleasure Interview
Space On Space: Please give a brief intro of who you are, your art practice, and your advocacy work.
Lara Salmon: I’m a performance artist. My current work addresses chronic pain and the reality of living with ongoing physical discomfort. In the past, I’ve been involved with efforts to unite refugee assistance and art. These projects allowed me to spend time in places like Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan.
One should plant trees, performance and solo exhibition at Artbug Gallery in Los Angeles, California, 2022. Photographer Julius Tanag.
Saline dissonance, Grand Prix performance at the 2021 Larnaca Biennale in Cyprus. Photographer Nicholas Mann.
My partner Vanessa Dahbour is a designer, and has supported herself for the last fifteen years by creating for names like Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie. She is half Palestinian and Indigenous American. We met on Hinge during the pandemic, fell in love, and have combined our skills, experiences, and beliefs to create For Your Viewing Pleasure (FYVP).
Power couple shot, photographer Evan Lane.
SOS: What is For Your Viewing Pleasure?
LS: FYVP is an apparel brand. Our designs make statements and open conversations. They amplify the call for Palestinian liberation, refugee rights, and LGBTQ+ equality. Vanessa finds design inspiration in vintage protest posters and techniques that are nostalgic to her upbringing in Los Angeles. We’ve been excited to see a lot of our items at protests. Most of our sales raise funds for humanitarian organizations like The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) and American Near East Refugee Assistance (Anera).
In 2021 and 2022, we started this work with some pilot projects, and officially launched the brand a year ago. Our first design was a collaboration with Alana Haddid: her handwritten family recipe for Palestinian Knafeh on a tee. We released the shirt at Haven for Artists in Beirut where fresh Palestinian Knafeh was served from one of the many refugee camps in the country.
FYVP Free Palestine tote.
““For Your Viewing Pleasure” is a way of saying there is nothing more beautiful than to witness the fight for liberation, equality, and justice.”
Alana Hadid x FYVP collaboration 2022, photographer Evan Lane.
SOS: Your shirts say phrases like "Liberate Gaza" and "Free Palestine," please share what these phrases mean to you and the movement.
LS: I don’t think most people realize how “unfree” Palestine is. A lot of the world does not know the extent to which Palestinians are restricted in expression, movement, and safety even during less violent periods. Israel controls all entry to Palestine and makes it difficult for Palestinians in the diaspora, like Vanessa, to even visit. Neither she nor her father have ever been to the land they are from.
Since 2009, I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the Middle East. I can speak and write Arabic. Due to my experiences working with refugee assistance organizations, I am more aware than most of the humanitarian situation in the region. I am continually floored as I learn more about the plight of Palestinians. Vanessa and I met teenagers who were born in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon who’ve said, “We feel like the world forgot us.” There is no way for them to get papers to move to a new country, no way to return to Palestine, and no way to get a work permit in their host country. When they announce this disparity to the world, social media shadow bans them. They feel invisible, like they’ve fallen through the cracks. It breaks my heart.
Every person should be free. Palestinians should be liberated from the conditions they live under: in Palestine, in refugee camps, and in the diaspora. It is so important right now to show up in solidarity, to raise Palestinian voices (or designs), and support their liberation as they see fit.
Za'atari Refugee camp in Jordan 2015.
Za'atari Refugee camp in Jordan 2015.
SOS: Can you share about why these phrases are not antisemitic and why it's important for people to speak out against what the United States government is doing in supporting military aid to Israel?
LS: Standing up for Palestinian’s right to be free is not anti-anything. Criticism of Israel should not be conflated with criticism of Judaism. That being said, I think that the movement to end the occupation needs to be actively pro-Jewish. As people become more aware of the situation in Palestine, and the movement grows, we must also work hard to stamp out any antisemitism within it.
You’d have to be living under a rock to miss how complicit the U.S. is in the current siege on Gaza and rising violence in the West Bank. Not only does the U.S. government fund it, but our government condones it. And not only do we do this now, but we have been financially supporting it for years. The weight of what the occupation has done both physically and mentally to Palestinians (and Israelis) sits on our shoulders.
Palestinian Refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon 2022.
Tayyeb in FYVP Free Palestine airbrush tee, photographer Evan Lane.
SOS: A percentage of profits from the shirts go to important humanitarian aid organizations. Can you share a bit about that?
LS: I’m in love with the work of the two main organizations we support: the PCRF and Anera. From what I’ve seen, these organizations activate within the communities they serve. We’ve been in contact with the PCRF since we created our first Free Palestine shirt in 2021. They are altruistic people doing amazing work for children in Gaza. We connected with Anera a year ago when we officially launched FYVP. They invited us to visit some of their projects in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon: we saw a recycling plant and winter jacket sewing workshop in Beirut, as well as, some of their efforts to re-educate the community on the downfalls of child marriage in the north.
SOS: How can people be involved with the work you are doing?
LS: Get a tee, wear it to a protest! Reach out, we love meeting people through FYVP.
We also organize Souk Marché, a Middle East and North African (MENA) marketplace in downtown Los Angeles. Our next souk is December 3, come by! It’s a great way to discover and support MENA businesses, many of whom do not have storefronts. There will be apparel, books, art, jewelry, perfume, food, coffee, and music with all sales donating 15% to the PCRF and Anera (who will also be there). We’re going to have a powerful line up of Palestinian speakers and artists performing at this souk, as well as a collective moment of silence for Gaza. It’s important to gather now, to build the community of MENA, and non-MENA activists and allies ever stronger.
Kehlani with an FYVP tee at an LA protest.
