One of the few monuments in the United States honoring an Arab-American is at the center of a new participatory art project that transforms the decades-old sculpture of a slain Palestinian-American figure into a sprawling, living artwork.
Standing outside the public library in Santa Ana, the memorial statue honors Alex Odeh, a Palestinian-American poet, civil rights leader, and scholar who was assassinated in 1985. Algerian-American artist Khalil Bendib created the bronze sculpture in 1994, depicting Odeh with a book in one hand and a dove in the other as a symbol of his peace activism. Over the years, the statue has been vandalized repeatedly, including red paint attacks in 1996 and 1997, and the theft of the dove in 2020, which was later recovered and reattached.
Artist Jon Rubin first saw the statue in spring 2023 during his residency at the Grand Central Art Center (GCAC) in Santa Ana, when it had recently been vandalized and a brick was left scattered around the sculpture. He said he was struck both by the hostility toward the memorial and by how little many people knew about Odeh’s life and work. “Here was a monument that was simultaneously being attacked and overlooked: a work that remained politically charged enough to attract repeated acts of vandalism, yet had become somewhat invisible to the public around it,” Rubin told Hyperallergic.
After speaking with Bendib and Odeh’s eldest daughter Helena, Rubin received permission to remove the dove again, this time “with intention and care,” for a new project called “The Stolen Dove.” Over several months, different people and organizations can host the dove for events, dinners, and performances, turning it into what Rubin described as a “living, decentralized monument.” Each host receives a replica of the statue, creating what he called “a growing flock dispersed across homes and institutions, creating a network of monuments and storytellers.”
Alex Odeh was born into a Catholic family in Jifna, Palestine, in 1944. He lived through the Nakba as a child and later experienced the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967 before immigrating to the US in 1972. He earned a Master’s degree in political science from California State University, Fullerton, where he also taught Arabic and Middle East history. In the early 1980s, he became the West Coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), working against anti-Arab stereotypes, discrimination, and hate crimes, while also supporting dialogue among Muslims, Jews, and Christians.
Odeh was killed on October 11, 1985, when a pipe bomb exploded at the ADC offices in Santa Ana. He had been scheduled to speak later that day at a local synagogue during Friday prayer services. Although the FBI and investigative journalists pointed to members of the Jewish Defense League, a right-wing terrorist group, as possible suspects, no one has ever been arrested, and the case remains officially unsolved.
“The Stolen Dove” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January alongside the documentary Who Killed Alex Odeh?, before traveling to a series of Southern California events, starting with a dinner hosted by Helena and Odeh’s widow Norma. The dove also visited the home of Julie Kasem, daughter of Casey Kasem, who helped fund the original statue; the home of artist elin o’Hara slavick; and a Passover seder hosted by Rabbi Arnold Rachlis, who spoke at the 1994 dedication of Bendib’s memorial sculpture. “We passed around the dove, let people hold it. I didn’t realize how powerful that would be, these feelings of despair and hope,” Rachlis told Hyperallergic.
This Saturday, July 18, the dove will appear at the 839 house gallery in Hollywood for an evening of music, readings, and food. Liz Hirsch, co-founder of 839, said the project feels urgent because it draws renewed attention to Odeh’s life, legacy, and the broader history of anti-Arab violence in the US that his assassination has come to represent. Artist and curator Joshua Oduga will perform ambient pieces, including a reworking of Sabreen’s 1994 song “Jayy al-Hamam (جاي الحمام)” (“The Doves Are Coming”), which uses text from a poem by Palestinian poet Hussein Barghouti. A reading from Odeh’s 1983 book of poems and essays, Whispers in Exile (Hamasat fil Ghurba), newly translated by Emily Drumsta, is also planned.
Rubin will later bring the dove to the Bay Area and then to Pittsburgh, where he lives and teaches. A public event in Santa Ana organized by the GCAC is also in development, according to director John Spiak, who said safety concerns exist but noted, “Alex was a peace activist, and his life was taken. There’s no security with any project you do.” The dove is scheduled to return to the statue in fall 2027 to mark the 42nd anniversary of Odeh’s murder, and Helena hopes it can visit his hometown of Jifna in Palestine before then. Rubin says that, little by little, the project will help restore Odeh’s legacy before the dove returns to its permanent place outside the Santa Ana library.
