Tuesday, April 23rd | 13:00-14:30
Location: The Palestinian Museum
Language: Arabic

Join us on a tour led by Rina Khatib and Ahmad Zayyad of the Museum’s artistic demonstration which includes two spaces carefully curated to respond to this horrific historical moment. The first is This is Not an Exhibition, which includes more than 260 artworks by over 100 Palestinian Gazan artists. The second is Women of Gaza, an ethnographic display in the Museum lobby of traditional thobes (dresses) and jewellery that tells their stories of creativity, refugeehood, and material solidarity.

Two walls are parallel, contending with each other, just like the river and the sea. They are painted indigo blue, as inspired by the indigo plant dye for which the village of Majdal, located between Gaza and Yaffa, was known: there, women used the dye to mark their thobes to indicate they were in a state of mourning the loss of a loved one.

During this war, artworks are being systematically destroyed. Scrutiny of the condition artists are living with and the fate of galleries and art institutions -such as Eltiqa Art Gallery and Shababek for contemporary art- we see what is devastating and catastrophic. We become witnesses to what the Palestinian fine arts movement has been forcibly deprived of; the inconceivable loss of artists who are now martyrs, and of the long years of creativity and innovation they had put into every work of art they created.