The Water Keepers documents a live performance undertaken by Jumana and a group of community members in ‘Ein Qiniya, a village in the West Bank in Palestine, as part of a workshop in 2021. The workshop formed part of Jumana’s residency with Sakiya, a progressive academy working between art, ecology and agriculture. Over the course of the residency, Jumana’s research focused on seven endangered natural water sources on the Abu Al-Adham hillside and she worked closely with members of the ‘Ein Qiniya community, who she called ‘Water Diviners’, to share words, stories, live drawing practices and participatory actions. The live performance documented in The Water Keepers took place between Sakiya and the ‘Ein al-Balad spring as a culmination of the workshop. 

The Water Diviners Palestine group are: Raghad Saqfalhait, Lama Khatib, Haifa Zalatimo, Layla Taher, Amal Hajjaj, Zeina Nedal, Thurayya Shneina (Um Jum’a), Ali Shneina (Abu Jum’a), Suha ‘Atta ‘Alqam, Rahaf and Tabaraq ‘Alqem, Sahar Qawasmi, Nida Sinnokrot, Issa Freij, Yusef Yacoub (Abu Omar), Ayoub Yacoub, Danna Masad, Tareq Abboushi, Yazan Salem, Salma Kharouba, Sa’ad Dagher, Canaan Mazar’a (Abu Ibrahim), Ishraq Awashra, and Amany Kattom.

The seven water sources on the Abu Al-Adham hillside are:

'Ein Abu al-Adham عين أبو الأدهم

‘Ein al-Uwayneh العوينة

‘Ein Boubin عين بوبين,

‘Ein al-Janayen (also known by ‘Ein um al-Rumman عين أم الرمان, the mother of pomegranates or Roman الرومان),

‘Ein al-Shahoun عين الشحون,

‘Ein al-‘Asfoura عين العصفورة,

‘Ein al-Ballad عين البلد

Jumana Emil Abboud (b. 1971, Shefa’amer) is Palestinian and is currently based between Jerusalem and London where she is completing her PhD. Her practice is grounded in the Palestinian cultural landscape and she draws on the traditions of folklore, myth-making and storytelling that once animated community life, particularly around times of family or community gathering, such as seed-sowing, water collection or harvest. She works across drawing, installation, video and performance, often collaboratively, exploring personal and collective memory and practices of sharing and re-telling as ways to address experiences of loss and longing and the impacts of decades of dispossession and annexation.

For more than 10 years, Jumana has focused on oral histories relating to water sources, springs, wells and rivers: ‘For thousands of years, the natural landscape we lived in in Palestine was a terrain of enchantment. The natural water source – spring, well, stream – was such a terrain, inhabited by spirits, good and bad. I like to refer to such waters as spirited sites.’