Further to our statement of solidarity with Palestine published in October, and in addition to our ongoing support for Palestinian artists in the UK, we have selected a small number of creative works, performances and discussions that draw attention to the suffering and injustice being experienced, bring solidarity, promote resistance, provide platforms for artists and reflect on the role and possibilities of arts and culture at this time.
Dice by Nayrouz Qarmout (pictured) translated by Sawad Hussain and Perween Richards commissioned by English PEN
Laughter from young mouths fills the hall of an old camp with mural-covered walls. ‘How did I know it’s a camp?’ she asks herself. But silence hangs over a clothesline fastened to the wall; a plastic Coca-Cola bottle is cut, now a pot for basil; a windowless frame. Colourful children’s clothes are thrown on a rope, no clothespins to catch their scent. She can almost smell the lack of detergent in them.
6th January (London): An Arab Christmas by Candlelight, prsented by Arts Canteen in collaboration with Grand Junction in memory of Elham Farah, a pioneering Christian Gazan music teacher
Elham was born in 1939, the daughter of a prominent Palestinian poet, Hanna Farrah. She taught music in Al Kamaliya and Al Kahira schools in Gaza City and at many cultural centres and kindergartens. She lived by herself in a small apartment in the city. She had survived many wars, yet she described the current war in Gaza as the worst thing she’d ever experienced.
For almost a month, Elham took shelter in one of only two churches still standing in Gaza along with hundreds of others to avoid shelling, crossfire, and shrapnel. While there she comforted those around her with her strong faith. On 12 November, she insisted on leaving the church to check on her home and breathe fresh air. As she arrived at her building, a sniper on the apartment roof shot her in the leg. Neighbours who tried to go to her were shot at. She died of her wounds where she lay.
Photographer Mohammed Zaanoun continues to try to keep the spotlight on the suffering of Palestinian civilians.
Like everyone now in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Zaanoun has been living breath by breath, in fear of what might fall from the sky, but he continues to send photographs and video clips to keep the spotlight on what people there are experiencing.
‘The bombs are still falling. My heart breaks every day’: novelists Isabella Hammad and Sally Rooney in conversation.
Isabella Hammad:
I wonder if the question [of what aritsts can do at this time] is partly a way of expressing horror not only at the sheer tremendousness of this violence, which is being enacted on an industrial scale – a scale that brings humanity so close to inhumanity that I think that for many it shakes the very sense of what we, as humans, actually are – but also at the way violence can make art-making seem quite futile and feeble, something easily crushed. Basically, it’s easy to feel useless, and from there it’s a short leap to despair. But I don’t believe we can afford to despair, nor do I think despair is ethical.
The Gaza Monologues – Border Crossings participated in the Global Reading of The Gaza Monologues, a poignant collection of testimonies written by young Gazans with Ashtar Theatre in 2010.
Listen to the Art Persists Podcast by Bosla Arts with artist/activist Nour Palestine on the importance of the documentation of the Palestinian struggle in light of the current bombardment of Gaza.
We chat to Nour about her project, Refugee Chronicles, where she interviews survivors of the 1948 Nakba which saw 700,000 Palestinians forcibly displaced and a further 15,000 killed. Nour talks about her project and its eerie parallels to Gaza today where over 1.8 million people have been internally displaced and at least 15,500 have been killed since 7 October 2023.
Artists and Allies of Hebron, a Berlin- and West Bank-based organisation and NGO which is due to exhibit at the Venice Biennale next year, has launched a new online magazine featuring Palestinian artists.
Areej Kaoud spent part of her childhood in Gaza before her family emigrated to Canada. Her 2017 piece, Anxiety Is a Present of the Present, is “derived from my interest in emergencies and disaster scenarios”, she says in the magazine. Meanwhile, Mahdi Baraghithi deals with Islamophobia in his work, and draws on the trauma experienced after one of his university friends was attacked by a group of men in the street in Bourges, France.
Maradona’s Legs – short film directed by Firas Khoury in 2019, now available on Netflix
Reintroducing: Protest – a new series of work from the Bush Theatre for 2024
We believe the connection between art and protest is vital. With ongoing conflicts escalating across the world, it is clear that we are living through a time where safety, liberty and freedom of expression are in jeopardy. Even as we prepared to release this statement, the global creative community learned the devastating news of the latest attacks on The Freedom Theatre and their artists in Jenin.
