More than 50 Palestinian artists are staging a biennial in Gaza and at galleries and museums across the globe. The Gaza Biennale, announced on 20 November with sponsorship from Al Risan Art Museum, aims to raise $90,000 for its artists through institutional partnerships and donations.
"The Gaza Biennale holds extraordinary significance, serving as a platform for Palestinian artists to express their struggles and hopes through art," the artist Motaz Naim tells The Art Newspaper.
According to the Gaza Biennale’s organisers, it serves as an urgent call for arts workers around the world to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
Ahmed Muhanna’s Loaf of Bread (2024) is a play on Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian (2019)—the infamous taped banana Courtesy the artist
"The repeated displacement and the preoccupation with providing for my family’s basic needs have directly impacted my creative output," says the artist Ali Tayeh. With limited supplies, artists are using materials at hand including aid boxes dropped by plane, old bread and garment scraps found in the rubble. "Art has become a means of documenting suffering and resilience, relying on simple materials that reflect reality,” Tayeh adds, “like repurposed fabrics or remnants of everyday items.”
"For Palestinian artists, creativity is both an act of resistance and a means of survival," says the artist Maysa Yousef.
More than 200 cultural institutions and heritage sites in Gaza have been demolished by Israeli bombardment since 7 October 2023, including universities, libraries, archives and mosques. According to Yousef, the biennial is a way to reclaim and preserve Palestinian culture and identity. "Continuing to create art gives us strength to confront tragedy,” she says, “and affirms our ability to transform pain into beauty, carrying a profound humanitarian message."
More than 44,000 people have been killed in the Israeli military’s ongoing aerial and ground campaign in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there. According to an analysis by the United Nations’ Human Rights Office, around 70% of the conflict’s victims are women and children. Around 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, and around 250 people were taken hostage. More than 60 living hostages, and the bodies of dozens more, are still being held in Gaza.
