It’s difficult to make art about violence. Often we see artists representing brutality and processing despair and paralysis by re-creating the catastrophe. But as historian Robin D.G. Kelley writes in his book Freedom Dreams, “The very existence of social movements [enables] participants to imagine something different, to realize that things need not always be this way.” This attempt to see the future for its potential beauty — that most daring vision — is what Kelley calls poetic knowledge.

A poem appears on the wall of Begonia Labs for the current exhibition Watermelon Seeds. “Think of Others” by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish can be read in Arabic or English, and the final two lines are as follows: “As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others / (those who have lost the right to speak). / As you think of others far away, think of yourself / (say: ‘If only I were a candle in the dark’).”

Watermelon Seeds is a group exhibition of poetic knowledge, and the most powerful show of Nashville’s summer art scene. It’s also the first time a local artist has curated an exhibition at Begonia Labs, the West End gallery for Vanderbilt University’s Engine for Art, Democracy and Justice, founded by María Magdalena Campos-Pons. As Campos-Pons explains, Watermelon Seeds fulfills EADJ’s “commitment to making local art visible and parallel with international figures … [and to creating] a space where we can have discussion, a space for a safe and respectful presentation of different views.”

The Watermelon Seeds curator is David Onri Anderson, known for his recurring imagery — candles, fruit, winged beings — and harmonious flat style that feels timeless and spiritual. The exhibition features artworks by Anderson, as well as AB Bedran, Ali El-Chaer and Beizar Aradini. Each is a local artist with connections to a diaspora: Anderson has a Sephardic Jewish background, Aradini is Kurdish, and both Bedran and El-Chaer are Palestinian. All four have come together with Begonia Labs as their gathering place to display “shrines to commemorate lives of those who have passed and those who are suffering.”

“Artmaking should be a process of unraveling narratives and perspectives that have been fed to us over the years in mass media,” Anderson tells the Scene, “deconstructing dominant voices, opinions and judgments to find where the heart is, where the compassion lies, that [which] seems to be missing from the systematic powers of the world.”

One of the best parts about a group show is how differently each artist comes to the subject — in this case, the shrine. Anderson tells the Scene that, to him, a shrine “operates as a spiritual portal … a sacred space where memory, feeling and adoration can continue to live in a place apart from the person or lives that inspired its existence.” Eight of his candle paintings — with tapers in varying stages of burned, melted and expired — encircle the image of a lotus-cut watermelon. They are meditative in their collective assembly.

For Bedran, a shrine is “a place inside us all where divine love and divine rage intersect.” Bedran is the curator for the 11:11 Art Collective, a DIY venue committed to hosting marginalized artists. Of all the pieces here, their crocheted “Tonight, I Dream of the Sea” feels most like a shrine. It occupies a spot on the floor — if you fail to acknowledge it, you run the risk of falling on top of it — and looks like a pooled afghan blanket in oceanic colors. Bedran’s other works include mixed-media collage and joyful tatreez — traditional Palestinian embroidery often patterned with trees and ducks.

El-Chaer, founder of art community Nour Nashville, is adamant that their pieces do not constitute a shrine, but could be an addition to a shrine. El-Chaer is Palestinian Christian, and their large-scale acrylic paintings with gold leaf are the showstoppers here, looming like Byzantine icons or stained-glass windows. Their diptych “The Flour Massacre” is a stunning display of heavenly and earthly realms, with two martyrs standing above a field of wheat.

Aradini is known for her hand embroidery on tulle, with delicate thread transforming photographs into textile masterpieces, but here she is notably restrained. A single embroidered tapestry is surrounded by six linocut prints, two bearing the words “resistance is life.” Aradini did not respond to my question about shrines — possibly because she’s busy preparing to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago this fall, but this absence of explanation feels intentional. A shrine doesn’t need its creator; it can be built and left for someone else to find.

There is such melancholy in Watermelon Seeds, and violence is the backdrop. Still, there is an invitation to be present with the artists’ grief and hope. The literal invitation is an artists’ talk on Aug. 9. Aradini will not attend, but Anderson, El-Chaer and Bedran will be present. 

“The voices of logic, of reason, of justice have a place to be here,” Campos-Pons says. “What I love about this exhibition is the place of encounter for the voices, for the individuals. Art is a place of negotiation … where we can understand each other better.”