As efforts to ease the humanitarian cataclysm in Gaza show few signs of progress, a group of Palestinian creatives are using the power of art to reintroduce humanity to an inhumane situation. The Gaza Biennale, a 60-artist exhibition, is a decentralised event taking place at 19 venues across 12 cities around the world, including three new pavilions in North America—in Toronto, and Washington, DC, and, next month, in New York City.
The biennale’s New York iteration will span five days (10-14 September) at the non-profit art space Recess in Brooklyn, with a smaller iteration remaining on view there for three months (18 September-20 December). The exhibition centres the work and stories of artists who still reside in Gaza or have only recently been able to leave the territory. Works in the show have been developed over the past year and a half and reflect the mounting devastation the Israeli military has unleashed on the tiny, densely populated region since the Hamas terror attack of 7 October 2023.
“The significance of this project lies in its ability to place art at the forefront of a global awakening, to challenge the art field to reckon with the weight of genocide, and to present a model of resilience, and fulfill a desperate need to recognise that the depth and complexity of human life,” a spokesperson for the biennale said in a statement. “The right of a people to exist with dignity on their land is fundamental to the purpose of art itself.”
The Gaza Biennale’s upcoming Brooklyn iteration builds on its British edition in 2024 and the spring of 2025, evolving from a demonstration outside the Institute of Contemporary Art in London to protest the complicity of UK cultural institutions in the Israel-Hamas war to an indoor display in May of 2025 at Ugly Duck Gallery in Bermondsey, alongside a programme of virtual talks and workshops led by Gaza-based artists.
Past iterations of the biennale have been staged in Athens, Istanbul, Padua, Valencia and elsewhere, showcasing art that is often made from humble, found materials like garment scraps or old aid boxes dropped from planes. At Recess, the exhibition will include works by 22 artists from Gaza.
“The Biennale invites us to engage with art’s capacity to reflect an unimaginable present, to defy all challenges and to build a global movement,” a spokesperson for Recess said in a statement. Additional programming details for the New York iteration will be announced in the coming weeks.
The Gaza Biennale has primarily operated as an advocacy and awareness-raising endeavour with a fundraising mission, partnering with institutions like the Al Risan Art Museum and Art for Palestine to further its cause.
The announcement of the exhibition’s New York debut comes amid increasingly grim reports from Gaza. More than 100 organisations, including Oxfam and Médecins Sans Frontières, recently signed a joint letter calling on Israel to stop of “weaponisation of aid” into Gaza, which had been under a state-ordered blockade since 2 March. The letter alleges that most international organisations have been unable to deliver supplies of lifesaving aid, which "has left hospitals without basic supplies, children, people with disabilities and older people dying from hunger and preventable illnesses, and aid workers themselves going to work hungry".
According to the Gaza health ministry, more than 62,000 Palestinians have died since Israel began its offensive after the 7 October attacks, 70% of whom are women and children; 235 people, including 106 children, have also died from stavation. The United Nations reported this month that 859 Palestinians had been killed near US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites, a claim the GHF denies.
More than 200 cultural institutions and heritage sites in Gaza—including universities, mosques, and libraries—have been destroyed by the Israeli bombardment, an incalculable loss of Palestinian collective memory and identity. The Gaza Biennale works against erasure, whether through the plaintive watercolours of the north Gazan artist Alaà Al Shawa, whose work explores the psychological toll of forced immigratio, or the furious abstractions of Motaz Naim, a painter displaced to Egypt whose current body of work explores the destruction of Gaza’s landscape.
“There is a silent pain and sorrow that quietly burns the heart, as well as the shock and loneliness—emotions that cannot be captured by camera and are often overlooked by media, who focus on dismembered bodies as if they were mere dolls, neglecting the real human suffering and the loved ones left behind”, Ruba Mahmoud, an artist featured in the biennale, said in a statement.
- Gaza Biennale, 10-14 September and 18 September-20 December, Recess, Brooklyn, New York
