Against a canvas of despair, artists draw upon struggles
The incessant buzzing of an Israeli drone fills the room.
On one large wall, scenes of death and desperate rescues through twisted metal and crushed rock play out on a video loop. A mound of rubble — metal rods, bricks and broken plaster — extends nearly the length of the exhibition hall.
Along blue walls meant to evoke the Gaza Strip's sky and sea hang paintings that mostly evoke life before Israel's intense bombardment and invasion: Palestinian still lifes, native cactuses, music, cats and cows, and even one Catwoman.
The work of more than 100 artists from Gaza lines the walls of this exhibition, which is showing at the Palestinian Museum in the West Bank, a collection of protest that is as much about the art that is not there, lost in the war that rages in Gaza, as about the art that is on display. Most of the artists are trapped in the enclave, struggling to survive, much less to create.
“We resist with our colors and our canvases in order to relay our message to the world,” said Basel El Maqosui, an artist displaced from his home in northern Gaza whose work is featured.
“They destroyed all our civilization and destroyed our modern and ancient artifacts,” he said in an interview. “Each of which carries a memory full of love and joy and another memory full of sadness and tears.”
The work in the show, called “This Is Not an Exhibition,” attempts to reflect the texture of Palestinian life that can be both political and apolitical at a time when Israel's stated war on Hamas has wrought a horrific human toll and vast destruction in Gaza.
The exhibition description says the artists are “resisting annihilation in a genocidal war” and showing how “the machine of killing and destruction” is transforming the landscape in Gaza, without mentioning Israel by name or the Hamas-led attack Oct. 7 that prompted the Israeli strikes and invasion.
The organizers of the exhibition say the show is an act of solidarity with artists in Gaza, providing a way to draw attention to the cultural cost of the war. The exhibition points to a shared experience between Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who are united by common aspirations for their own state, having lived under Israeli control for decades.
“Killing the Palestinians, killing the artists, destroying their works, targeting the cultural institutions,” said Ehab Bseisso, a member of the museum's board of directors, “is a primary part of the genocidal erasure of history and memory and creativity.”
“This is about serving the colonial narrative that Gaza did not have life, did not have art, did not have culture,” he added.
During the more than four months of war, Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have destroyed many artists' studios and works, as well as most museums and cultural institutions — a loss to the territory's cultural life that experts say could take more than a generation to rebuild.
UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization, has expressed concern about the effects of the war on Gaza. The agency has documented damage to at least 22 heritage sites, including 10 buildings of historical or artistic interest, one museum and three archaeological sites.
Many represent joyful aspects of Palestinian life, while others represent the struggles of what organizers call “the harshness of reality” and the “ugly cruelty of the occupation.”
“This is the voice of Gaza they are trying to silence,” Bseisso said.
At least four of the artists with works in the exhibition have been killed by Israeli airstrikes, according to the organizers. Their names are marked on a wall of contributors with a black line in the corner of their nameplate.