Falastini Spirit in Color, on Canvas

Picasso’s Guernica endures as a searing indictment of forgotten atrocities, ensuring the Basque town’s 1937 bombing by fascist forces remains etched in collective memory. Gazan artists’ works amid Gaza’s ongoing genocide fulfill the same vital role. The four canvases featured here radiate the Falastini spirit of unyielding resilience, each a defiant testament to survival that captures shattered homes’ anguish, displacement’s wounds, and hope’s fierce flicker amid rubble. Defying acute material shortages and perpetual peril, these creators alchemize aid bags into palettes, shattered recollections into forms, and raw despair into emblems of rooted identity and revolt. Their art not only chronicles endured inferno but pulses with an invincible cultural vitality. This is an adamant claim to life, remembrance, and existence against annihilation’s tide.

[1] Painting by artist Azza Shaikh Ahmad 

[2] Painting by artist Mohammed Alhaj 

[3] Painting by artist Awatef Amra Saqqa 

[4] Painting by artist Hamada M Elkept 

[1] Artist Azza Shaikh Ahmad – A visual artist from Gaza. She has held four solo exhibitions in Gaza, Germany, Jordan, and the United Kingdom, and has participated in multiple local and international group shows. Azza also works as an art education supervisor in Gaza, where she supports and mentors emerging generations of young artists.

[2] Artist Mohammed Alhaj – Born in 1982, he holds a BA in Art Education from Al-Aqsa University. He has presented several solo exhibitions, including Abu Al-Kofiya (shown in multiple countries as part of the Gaza Biennale) and The Evacuation Map, and participated in major international events such as the Venice Biennale in 2022 and 2024. He has led many art workshops and is currently displaced in Nuseirat Camp after his home and studio in Gaza City were destroyed.

[3] Artist Awatef Amra Saqqa – A visual artist, researcher, and lecturer at the College of Arts and Crafts. She has taken part in numerous exhibitions inside Palestine and abroad, and her work often explores the intersections of memory, identity, and place. Alongside her artistic practice, she contributes to academic and artistic discourse through teaching and research.

[4] Artist Hamada M Elkept – A visual artist from Gaza who lived 28 years under siege and recurring wars, growing up in a constantly threatened environment by land, sea, and air. His work expresses deeply personal and collective wounds linked to Israeli occupation. Hamada studied Fine Arts in Gaza, received a visual arts grant at the Spanish Royal Academy in Rome, and held solo exhibitions at the French Cultural Center in Gaza and at The Grapa Gallery in Valencia. He has participated in OpenArt Biennale in Örebro (Sweden), the Gaza Biennale, and the Sahab grant, and now lives in Belgium on an artist residency in Brussels.