A presentation by the Pakistani artist Rashid Rana on show at the inaugural Art Basel Qatar (5-7 February; preview days 3-4 February) will directly confront the assault on Gaza by Israel. Black Square (2025) is a large wall-based photomontage grid, formed of hundreds of stills from an open-sourced CCTV camera in Gaza, which documents a night of bombardment by Israeli forces in the spring of 2025. The work shows squares of a mostly black night sky that are punctuated by strips of white and red and brief flashes of orange, as Israeli rockets fire into Palestine and explode.
The work, priced at $30,000, has been brought to the fair by the Mumbai gallery Chemould Prescott Road, and all proceeds will go towards Gaza relief funds, chosen by the gallery’s director, Shireen Gandhy, in consultation with Palestine community workers. The gallery debuted the work in June 2025 in an exhibition of Rana’s work at Frieze's No 9 Cork Street exhibition space in London.
Rana notes the “potential risk in aestheticising horrific incidents, like the atrocities taking place in Gaza” but asserts that “when stories take the form of art they become more noticeable”. His use of the CCTV emphasises how "readily available" evidence of Israel’s brutality is, he says. “It’s right there for anyone to witness.”
Israel-Qatar relations have been a hot button issue in the run up to Art Basel Qatar, especially after Iran's deadly crackdown on widespread protests have flared geopolitical tensions within the region. In the past week, numerous flag carriers—including British Airways, Air France and American Airlines—have suspended their flights to the Middle East and some UK and US personnel were withdrawn from their Qatar air bases last month. In September 2025, Israel launched a missile strike in Doha targeting Hamas leadership—its first in Qatar—which killed six people. Qatar condemned the strike as a terrorist attack.
Since Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023, which killed more than 1,200 Israelis and in which more than 250 people were taken hostage, more than 71,000 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed in Gaza in total, many of the victims women and children, according to the local heath authority.
Palestine remains a eruptive issue within many art spaces, particularly those in countries whose governments aid the Israeli military. Qatar meanwhile officially calls for full Palestinian sovereignty, including its establishment as an independent state based on the borders of 1967, with East Jerusalem as the capital. The Gulf state takes a leading role in mediating relations between Palestine and Israel.
To her surprise, Gandhy faced no pushback from visitors during the work's debut in London and was inspired by its positive reception to bring it to the much-anticipated Doha fair. “There is a moment, where the artist, the project and the placement align. Our showing in Art Basel Qatar is one of them,” Gandhy says. “That moment of ‘we live in interesting times’ has sailed. We live in tumultuous times. Rashid speaks to our times: His immense ability to merge art, technology and politics is a poignant expression in this presentation.”
