Artists in Gaza: Art is the way I feel free

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/01/artists-working-siege-gaza-israel

Art is the way I feel free

Grey rubble dust has settled on almost everything around a destroyed house in Deir al-Balah, a town in the centre of the occupied Gaza Strip, but on some shrapnel-pocked walls, the paint is still fresh and vibrant.

Graffiti artists have used the building as a canvas after Israel’s five-day Operation Shield and Arrow in May, a surprise offensive that left 33 Palestinians and two people in Israel dead. On one wall, a child waving a Palestinian flag is depicted with wings, standing amid the clouds. In a destroyed bedroom, a young girl brushing her hair has been painted behind a ruined dressing table, her face peering out from where the mirror used to be.

Art, and artists, endure in Gaza, despite the punishing Israeli-Egyptian blockade on the tiny coastal enclave that has been in place since a takeover by the militant group Hamas in 2006.

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Maryam Salah, a set and costume designer at Gaza’s lone theatre space, said: “At the borders, there is no understanding of what artistic materials are. I have to make my own stuff for the theatre, use window silicone for masks and make my own fake blood with red food colouring, because I can’t get hold of them. The question is always, ‘Why do you need it?’, not ‘Why shouldn’t I have it?’”

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