by The incessant drone of an Israeli drone fills the room.
On a large wall, scenes of death and desperate rescues by hand play on a loop through twisted metal and crushed rock. A large mound of rubble – metal rods, bricks and broken plaster – stretches almost the length of the exhibition hall.
Along blue walls meant to evoke the sky and sea of Gaza hang paintings that mostly evoke life before Israel’s intense bombing and invasion: Palestinian still lifes, native cacti, music, cats and cows, and even a Catwoman.
The work of more than 100 Gaza artists covers the walls of this exhibition, displayed at the Palestinian Museum in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a protest collection that is as much about art that is not there, lost in war. that wreaks havoc in Gaza, as well as on the art that is exhibited. Most artists are trapped in the enclave, struggling to survive, let alone create.
“We resist with our colors and our canvases to convey our message to the world,” said Basel El Maqosui, an artist displaced from his home in northern Gaza whose work is featured.
“They destroyed our entire civilization and destroyed our ancient and modern 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.”
High on the hallway wall hangs his painting of a Palestinian woman, her head, face and shoulders bordered by layers of colorful scarves: red, yellow and blue.
Mr. El Maqosui said he had been inspired by his neighbor in northern Gaza, a young Bedouin woman who had a unique style of wearing bright Palestinian clothing, wrapping four or five colorful scarves around her no matter the occasion or the weather.
The work of the artists in the show, called “This is not an exhibition,” attempts to reflect the texture of Palestinian life, which can be both political and apolitical at a time when Israel’s declared war against Hamas has caused a terrible human cost and enormous losses. destruction in Gaza.
Exhibition organizers say they see the show as an act of solidarity with Gaza artists, providing a way to draw attention to the cultural cost of the war. The exhibition points to a shared experience among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who, while divided in geography and governance, are united by common aspirations for their own state, having lived under Israeli control for decades in various forms.
“Killing Palestinians, killing artists, destroying their works, attacking cultural institutions,” said Ehab Bseisso, a member of the museum’s board of directors, “is a fundamental part of the genocidal erasure of history, memory and creativity “.
“This is about serving the colonial narrative that Gaza had no life, no art, no culture,” he added.
During the more than four months of war, Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have destroyed the studios and works of many artists, as well as most museums and cultural institutions, a loss to the cultural life of the territory that, according to experts, It could take more than a generation to rebuild.
UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization, has expressed concern about the impact of the war on Gaza. the agency has documented damage to at least 22 heritage sites, including 10 buildings of historical or artistic interest, a museum and three archaeological sites.
Standing in the exhibition hall and speaking over the sound of the drone, Bseisso referred to the works of art hanging around him as “survivors” because they were sold to collectors, universities and cultural centers outside the Gaza Strip before before the war started.
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.”
One painting, from 1982, shows a body holding its dismembered head wrapped in a black and white checkered scarf known as a kaffiyeh. Another, from the 1970s, shows a chained man and a dead dove. Below it hangs a 2016 painting showing a person whose face is covered with a red scarf holding white underwear on which the word “return” in Arabic is spray-painted.
“This is the voice of Gaza that they are trying to silence,” Bseisso said.
Some of those voices have been lost.
According to organizers, at least four of the artists with works in the exhibition have been killed in Israeli airstrikes. Their names are marked on a wall of contributors with a black line in the corner of their badge.
Mr. El Maqosui is a far cry from the days when he spent his time teaching art at a school during the day and then creating colorful art in his home studio at night. His home and studio were destroyed in an Israeli airstrike, he said.
More than two decades of works were destroyed. “I lost everything I had,” he said.
Now he spends much of his days carrying and filtering water, queuing for food and keeping his family’s ramshackle plastic tent intact against the cold, wind and rain in the southern city of Rafah.
He still finds time for art, sitting in the shop, bundled up in blankets, drawing with pen in a notebook, his colorful subjects replaced by black and white depictions of the grim reality in which he and more than two million others find themselves. now. themselves living.
“In these difficult circumstances that we find difficult to describe with words, I am trying to hold on to my humanity by drawing,” he said. “Drawing does not change what we are experiencing, but it is a way of transmitting our suffering to the world.”
When the war began, the Palestinian Museum was preparing an exhibition on music that would open in November. But seeing the death and destruction in Gaza prompted organizers to pivot.
They tore down the walls of the music exhibit and used the rubble to form a mound of rubble in the center of the museum room.
Shareef Sarhan, co-founder of Shababek, an artists’ collective and gallery in Gaza City, said the effect “makes you feel like you’re entering Gaza with all its destruction.” Sarhan, who lives in Istanbul and Paris, helped put together the exhibition from afar, suggesting sounds of drones and debris, among other ideas.
Before the war, the top floor of Shababek was used for resident artists to concentrate on their art. It was destroyed by an Israeli attack, said Sarhan, who was outside Gaza when the war began.
The lower two floors, where some of the enclave’s most renowned artists displayed their sculptures, paintings and mixed media art installations, remain intact and for many weeks housed families who had fled their homes and sought refuge there.
Sarhan says he doesn’t know what happened to many of the paintings that were there, but believes families used the wood and canvas to make fires to stay warm amid severe fuel shortages resulting from Israel’s near-total siege.
Through the exhibition, he said, Gaza artists can communicate with people outside despite the war, at a time when most of the population has been isolated from the rest of the world.
During the war, telephone and Internet communications have been periodically cut off, either by military airstrikes, blackouts or, according to senior US officials, by Israel directly.
“People are losing their connection to the outside world, but art can play a role that the artist cannot,” Sarhan said. “People can see your message and feel your situation. It becomes like a reflection, like an official spokesperson for them.”
