Love Letter #693 Illuminating love’s truth even when life prevents its manifestation.
Peter Bruun
2018, 8.5”x11”, ink on paper
This is a kind of love story.
Once upon a time…
A Palestinian artist, Jasem Shuman, participated in an exhibition Peter organized in 2010 while he was cultural envoy to Israel for the U.S. State Department.
At the show’s opening in Jasem’s hometown of Ramallah, he met a woman—a fellow artist from East Jerusalem—and the two fell in love.
But standing between them and a life together was the Israeli West Bank barrier, built by Israel along the Green Line and barring Palestinians from easily crossing back and forth. The physical blockade reverberated into family politics and daily life, ultimately making being together impossible.
Seeing no way forward, they moved on to wed others and live separate lives.
Yet their love persisted in Jasem’s heart, undiminished by life’s circumstances.
Jasem made a painting about it: 20 Centimeters.
With a gap symbolic of the physical wall between the lovers, the diptych nonetheless depicts a single image: their two names in Arabic, visually joined across the barrier.
Two bodies, and one soul.
Peter reconnected with Jasem in 2020 and learned this story, seeing in it an echo of his own life. He too had made art about such unattainable love.
For the two-year project Beyond Beautiful: One Thousand Love Letters, Peter made drawings inspired by hundreds of actual love letters. The letters were between all sorts of people, sharing stories of all kinds of love. A few were Peter’s own.
For the two-year project Beyond Beautiful: One Thousand Love Letters, Peter made drawings inspired by hundreds of actual love letters. The letters were between all sorts of people, sharing stories of all kinds of love. A few were Peter’s own.
The story behind Love Letter #693 is one of those. Just like Jasem’s, a tale of deeply felt love out of reach, but eternal in Peter’s heart.
For both men, impossible love embodied through the grace of art.