Feature: Art - Palestinian war artists' exhibition: The Gaza Under Siege, Islington Assembly Hall from Monday July 26

Published: 15 July 2010
by PETER GRUNER

A DRAMATIC collection of paintings depicting the faces of people in war-torn Gaza are to go on display in Britain for the  first time thanks to the work of an Islington-based charity. Islington Friends of Yibna – a support group for a refugee camp of that name in Rafah, close to the Egyptian border – are launching the exhibition at the Assembly Hall next  door to the Town Hall in Upper Street on Monday July 26. 

More than 40 works will go on show by a new collective of 10 Palestinian war artists, the majority of them women. 

They are a reaction to last year’s bombing of Gaza by Israel, in which 1,400 people died, including 400 children. 

The artists recount life and death, the experience of siege, the loss and devastation resulting from the Israeli military offensive in the winter of 2008 and 2009. 

Some of the work deals with the expulsion from their homes and lands during al-Nakba (“the catastrophe”) of 1948 that led to life in the refugee camps. 

Symbolic references, photographs of events, and personal and common experience can be found in the paintings as the artists, working with limited access to materials, affirm the value of life and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of the conditions of war. 

More paintings were due to have been smuggled out of Gaza by Islington Free Palestine campaigner Alex Harrison. But she was one of those arrested by the Israelis on the recent Gaza flotilla in which nine Turkish activists were killed. 

The paintings have been framed professionally for a limited budget thanks to the generosity of Frame Factory in Cross Street, Angel. 

The Islington Tribune published an article in January this year about the paintings when the Yibna Artists Forum held its inaugural exhibition in Rafah town hall. 

The exhibition will later tour the UK. 

Chairwoman of Friends of Yibna, Israeli-born Yael Kahn, said the paintings did more than any photograph to show the extent of human suffering in beleaguered Palestine. She said: “Many capture the fear and misery of war.” 

Being an artist in Gaza has its own problems, said Yael, not the least of which is the difficulty of getting materials due to the economic blockade. 

“All the paint, paint brushes and board have to be smuggled into Gaza, often via tunnels under the border,” she added. “I think there are similarities here with Anne Frank’s diary, in that like the Holocaust victim Anne, this extraordinary work has been accomplished under the most appalling hardship.” 

• The Gaza Under Siege exhibition, Islington Assembly Hall, Upper Street, Islington N1. Opens Monday July 26 at 2pm.Then Tuesday July 27 until Friday July 30, 10am-4pm. Admission free. www.yibnaartistsforum.org.uk.  For more information call 07880 731 865