The Gaza Strip has been experiencing a brutal war for more than 200 days, in which the number of martyrs exceeded 35,000, and the number of injured exceeded 70,000 in one of the most horrific genocides in history.
That war, as recorded by cameras, recordings, smartphones and transmitted by satellites, was recorded by survivors on walls and rubble as an attempt to present a Palestinian psychological narrative of the horrors of war.
Why do we draw on walls?
Writer Geoffrey Ian Ross argues that over the past 50 years, there has been a marked rise in the quantity and diversity of graffiti and graffiti art in major urban areas, accompanied by a growing interest in this form of public art.
Regardless of the precise definitions, the image that graffiti left in the mind as a type of visual art is that it is a form of political rebellion, but in an artistic way.
Ross also argues that a great deal of graffiti and street art was actually created during periods of social and political unrest, and protests (e.g., Black Lives Matter). However, there are large bodies of graffiti art more concerned with chronicling political conflicts.
This is what happens in the case of Gaza specifically; This narrow coastal strip overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, wall painting, or graffiti art, in this region fraught with horrors, suffering and pain, comes as a powerful way to express the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza under the yoke of the separation wall, displacement and loss of land.
In the murals, unlike the political paintings of Orientalists, Gaza rises from the rubble once again, standing strong at the hands of its artists and painters, declaring its wound, its suffering, and its existence. Ironically, it does not die or end, as if it were a phoenix rising from the ashes; Anyone who is interested in fine art cannot help but laugh at the illusion of the “land without people” that was promoted by European colonialism from the nineteenth century in dozens and dozens of romantic paintings about the return to the Holy Land.
One look at the murals of Gaza after October 7 compared to Orientalist paintings, for example “Gaza” by the British painter David Roberts, painted in 1839, which appears as a deserted wasteland inhabited by no one, reveals everything.
How did the walls of Gaza record the effects of the bombing?
Graffiti and graffiti in the case of Gaza are not only an act of self-expression but also a form of Palestinians’ personal chronicling of moments of bombing and subsequent lifelong psychological trauma.
Graffiti in Gaza is not just an artistic practice for a people who enjoy comfort and prosperity. Rather, it is a way to provide a visual narrative, on the part of Palestinians, of what it means to be a Gazan in a world where several regimes are conspired to strip you of your land and erase you from existence.
The artists use symbolism, juxtaposition, and irony as they seek to represent the horrors of having explosive materials dropped next to you but miraculously not dying. This does not mean that you survived. Because the abyss and the impact that the war left on the soul is too great for anything to heal.
For example, in one of the murals, which is taken from a real photo, we see a child hiding the face of her doll so that she does not see what she sees. Other murals depict women screaming while holding the palms of their dead children in their hands.
“I tried to convey to the world my feelings and the events happening in Gaza through drawing,” says Menna Hamouda, a mural painter from Gaza. Regarding the same situation, Gaza artist Ali Al-Jabali says that his drawings and murals, especially the “Dreamers Among the Rubble” exhibition, on the walls of bombed houses and destroyed buildings, express the suffering that people experience in the Gaza Strip.
But what effects do these murals leave on residents who watch their torment recorded on the walls while the bombing continues? Here is the same stone that is used for construction, and against the occupying soldiers, used as panels.
In every brush that paints a mural, a painful story from Palestine is revealed, telling about besieged Gaza or occupied Jerusalem. The colors and lines are transformed into a language charged with pain and steadfastness and announces Gaza, which resembles a phoenix. Always emerging from the rubble.