‘My drawings are a scream for help’: Artwork from the Gaza Biennale

This week, the Gaza Biennale – an international project which platforms over 50 artists from Gaza – has returned to London. From May 28 to June 1, there will be a daily exhibition at Ugly Duck gallery in Bermondsey, along with a rich programme of talks, film screenings, interactive mural events in and around London, workshops led by artists who are currently in Gaza, and an online auction selling limited-edition prints, organised in partnership with Art for a Free Palestine.

The exhibition – titled علىأنقاضهذاالعا/ Upon the Ruins of This World – is intended to showcase the Gaza Biennale in its current state, featuring work by each of the participating artists. “We’re not choosing a specific artist, and that’s a really important political and ethical decision that we’re making, because for us, there is no differentiation. Each and every artist deserves space. Each and every artist deserves life, and deserves their message to be received by anyone and everyone willing to to receive it,” a representative of Gaza Biennale – Jinnaah UK tells Dazed. “We’re hoping that the response will be to open up more doors for these artists, because each of them have exhibitions ready to go – they just need the opportunities.”

Many of the artists featured in the Biennale are still living in Gaza and continuing to produce work under desperate conditions. “These artists are like anybody else in Gaza. They are facing famine, starvation, everything and anything you can imagine. There is no separation of our artists just because they belong to the Gaza Biennale – they are human beings experiencing a genocide, and their efforts to continue making art are a form of living archive,” the spokesperson says. This kind of documentation is particularly crucial when Palestinian journalists are being killed at an astonishing rate and Israel is barring foreign media organisations from entering Gaza – it is falling upon artists to record.

One of the exhibition’s most powerful artefacts is a children’s school jotter from Gaza, which has been used as a sketchbook by artist Sohail Salem: he writes, “my drawings are a message to the world, a scream for help. A message to my friends that I am well.” As per a post on Jinnah UK’s Instagram account, the notebook asks, “what does it mean that we hold these pages – when the hands that filled them still tremble under drones? What does it mean to live in a world, and exist in an industry, that often values the artefact more than the life that made it?”

Looking to the future, the Gaza Biennale’s British wing wants to find a longer-term space where it can host exhibitions and organise a summer school centred on classes and workshops with its artists, much like the ones taking place this week (if Gaza’s patchy internet connection allows). What form these workshops take will vary from artist to artist: “Obviously the work is political, but it’s up to them to decide what they want to do. Some of them might be more conversational, others might be more about technique,” the spokeperson says.

Since the project launched, the Gaza Biennale in London has mostly been projected outside art institutions, including Tate Modern and the ICA, as a protest against their alleged complicity with the Israeli state. While this approach has been potent, it has limited the number of artworks they can display, which has typically been capped at around 20 to 26 – no-one wants to spend four hours shivering in the damp and cold of a British winter evening. Having an indoor space will allow the biennale to devote more time and attention to the artworks: on Friday, the organisers are going to the same kind of projection they normally do outside but as a relaxed event in the exhibition space, where they will discuss one work each by the featured artists.

The idea is to offer a taste of the phenomenal talent of the artists involved and hopefully to secure further support for the project. “If people want to see more, the invitation is to open up your doors, open up your resources and open up your worlds, because we all have access to something,” they say. The Gaza Biennale seems to be gaining momentum and building upon its previous actions: this week’s residency came about after a representative of Ugly Duck visited the protest at the ICA and decided they wanted to get involved. As the organisers see it, everyone involved in the culture sector has a role to play in supporting these artists.

While the art world’s complicity with the Israeli state is an ongoing concern, the Gaza Biennale – Jinnaah UK wants the focus to be on its artists and their work. “Regardless of the industry’s biases, we still exist,” they say. “You’re not going to deny us our right as human beings to say we believe in Gaza, we believe in Palestine, and we believe in these artists.”