When the Israeli bombardment of Gaza began, Faisal Saleh reached out to US museums, interested in whether they would make statements in solidarity with artists from Gaza. “The museums told me they focus on programming,” Saleh told me by telephone. “So I thought, Okay, here’s some programming.”
Saleh is the founding executive director of the Palestine Museum US, in Woodbridge, Connecticut, which exhibits roughly two hundred to three hundred pieces of art by one hundred Palestinian artists working in Palestine and around the world. In a kind of emergency curation, he has drawn together artwork from eight artists living or working in Gaza, and two hundred more drawings by children from Gaza — an exhibition the Palestine Museum US is offering to loan for free to any US museum. The loan is available beginning December 17.
Saleh created the new loan program in part because he knows that the — often extraordinary — steps required to collect artwork by artists in Gaza will make it difficult to source work for museum programming. Because of the Israeli government’s restrictions on travel and movement in and out of Gaza, work by its artists must be carried out by hand. Many of the artworks Saleh has collected remain with him simply because returning them after an exhibit in the US was simply too difficult. “And now, of course,” he added, “it’s impossible.”
All of the artwork in the loan program was created in Gaza — some of it by artists whom Saleh hasn’t heard from in weeks.
Saleh founded the museum in 2018 with the goal of bringing unmediated Palestinian perspectives to US conversations. The museum’s permanent collection includes historical photographs, stretching back to the end of the nineteenth century; embroidery pieces including thobes, which have a rich history as texts of resistance; and work from children in Gaza.
The Gaza art loan includes work from eight artists. Five of them are represented here, with images that Saleh provided to Guernica:
Mohammed Alhaj was born in Libya in 1982 and lives and works in Gaza.
Born in a refugee camp in Gaza in 1976, Mohammed Al-Hawajri founded the Eltiqa Group for Contemporary Art in the Gaza Strip in 2002. His work can be found in museum collections around the world.
Motaz Naim lives in northern Gaza and lectures at the University College of Science and Technology–Khan Younis. He has exhibited globally, with work inspired by where he lives, between nature, sea, village, city, and camp.
Ayman Essa was born in Gaza City in 1974 and has exhibited at, among others, the Rome Biennale for Young Artists.
Mohamed Harb was born in Gaza in 1979. He is a member of the Palestinian Association of Fine Artists and, since 2003, director of the Palestinian Satellite Channel.
