As Firas Zreik strummed the harplike kanun at the opening of the Gaza Biennale in New York last week, visitors were surrounded by artistic renderings from the war zone in the Middle East. There were images of mortal wounds, of rubble, of survival.
The melody by Zreik, a 29-year-old Palestinian-born musician, set a somber tone for the show, which was staged at Recess Art in Brooklyn as the first leg of a brief American tour.
Participants hoped this edition of the show, named “From Gaza to the World,” would help Americans understand the perspective of Palestinians who are experiencing violence at a time when some institutions are rejecting Palestinian art. Most of the paintings, illustrations and sculptures were reproductions made from digital photographs and carried out by instructions from the artists, who are unable to transport their work outside of Gaza.
In a video projected onto a screen behind Zreik, the 22-year-old artist Yara Zuhod flipped through a book of drawings. “I don’t have the right to travel, to share my work,” she said.
Lindsay C. Harris, the co-director of Recess Art, said the nonprofit organization considered that it could lose financial support for staging an exhibition on a politically sensitive topic. But when organizers reached out this year, she found it difficult to say no.
“If these artists have the courage to continue their practice, then we can have the courage to be a platform for those stories,” Harris said.
While the full New York exhibition ended on Monday, a selection of works will remain on view through Dec. 20. Other editions of the show have been staged in countries like France and Denmark, and more will open in countries like Greece and Turkey. Organizers are also planning to bring the exhibition to Washington.
The show’s organizers, who declined to reveal their identities to avoid drawing attention from the artists, said in a statement that the Gaza Biennale aimed to present an image of Palestinians that “goes beyond breaking news, media coverage and statistics.”
“Despite the sorrow and pain brought by the circumstances, and amid the scent of death,” they continued, “artists in Gaza plant seeds of hope for humanity.”
The war in Gaza began after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages. Israel has since bombarded much of Gaza, killing more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry. Health experts warned last month that the area was under famine. On Tuesday, the Israeli military said it had launched a ground operation into Gaza City, attempting to take control of an area even as hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents remain there.
During the exhibition in New York on Thursday, the poet Ammiel Alcalay flipped through a notebook of illustrations by the artist Sohail Salem. “With my trembling hands, I try to draw without hesitation and share my sketches on social media whenever I can,” the artist wrote in a statement. “These small notebooks and my pens became my refuge.”
Alcalay had known Salem’s work before the war and said the exhibition was a special opportunity for American audiences to discover him.
“There is a presence of mind to be able to record — emotionally and conceptually — both beauty and destruction,” Alcalay said, drawing comparisons to the artistic responses of Picasso and Goya to the wars of their eras. “Art is supposed to represent the possibilities of the human spirit under duress, and the art that we should be looking at is coming from Gaza.”
Other visitors who were less familiar with the artists came away with a similar feeling. While the exhibition was centered on Palestinian suffering in Gaza, there were a few mentions of Israel, including an installation by Ghanem Alden called “The Rocket and the Carrot,” which satirizes the Israeli government’s “carrot and stick” approach to the conflict.
Yolande Macon, a fashion content creator, found herself staring at six digital drawings by the artist Ahmad Adawy, including an image of a nude man sitting on the ground; his back is pockmarked with holes that represent wounds. The haunting image was accompanied by other scenes of daily life for Gazans living in tents and surrounded by military vehicles.
“This one is really staring back at you,” Macon said.
As the second anniversary of the Israel-Hamas war approaches, the Gaza Biennale was more than just an outlet for the artists. It was also a test of how much visibility Palestinian artists could have in the United States as the White House scrutinizes pro-Palestinian activists and suspends visas for the territory’s passport holders.
Zreik, who played the kanun, struggled with his role in the show.
“I have to be very delicate in not romanticizing the tragedy and not taking away from the exhibition,” he said a few hours ahead of his performance. “What I feel or don’t feel is irrelevant. This is about the artists of Gaza.”
Zachary Small is a Times reporter writing about the art world’s relationship to money, politics and technology.
The post Palestinian Artists Open Gaza Biennale in New York appeared first on New York Times.
