Art in Ruins is curated by Gazan artist and filmmaker Mohamed Harb and presented through a collaboration between Artists Supporting Palestine and Leeds Palestinian Film Festival. This year’s film festival will also close with a linked Art in Ruins event on December 6th at HEART which will feature three short films about art and Palestine, including a new documentary by Mohamed. The exhibition presents works by Mohamed and four fellow artists from Gaza: Ayman Essa, Mohamed Alfarra, Abdul Nasser Amer and Maisara Baroud. Five works by each artist have been reproduced as prints and are available to purchase for £25 each, with 100% of the sale price going to the artists.

We must acknowledge the circumstances in which this exhibition has been curated and is presented to you. Since October 2023, Israel has conducted a genocide in plain sight, with unprecedented quantities of ordnance used to level the tiny strip of land that over 2 million internally displaced Palestinians call home. Israel broadcast its genocidal intentions and has continued to broadcast its execution of these intentions over the past two years, making this the first live-streamed genocide. The physical and emotional stresses of these last two years have taken an enormous toll on the people of Gaza. The loss of family members, friends, homes and entire neighborhoods, including nearly all hospitals, schools, universities and places of worship has become a universal experience for children and adults alike. Mohamed, like many others, has lost family members, his studio and the home his father built. He has also been forced to burn his stretcher bars to boil water and to barter artworks for basic provisions such as flour. Israel has so far enjoyed complete impunity in relation to international law, leaving us with the very real prospect of a future defined by lawlessness, extreme violence and ethno-nationalist supremacy. As UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory Francesca Albanese reminds us, what Israel has done and is doing is not normal and it must not be normalised.

It is a remarkable testament to the steadfastness (sumud) of Mohamed, his fellow artists and all Palestinians, that even in such harrowing circumstances, they have retained their humanity and their desire to reach others with their art and culture. Severely limited internet access and electricity supplies have made it difficult to communicate regularly with the artists and even the source files for prints have been shared as and when internet access allowed and at limited file sizes. The prints presented here should not therefore be treated as straightforward reproductions of their originals, but rather as objects that bear witness to the circumstances from which they have come. We felt it would be inappropriate to place the prints in frames, as doing this would obscure their dreadful context and in a sense it is this context, rather than the individual works, that is the main subject of the exhibition.

The exhibition is a ghost-like manifestation of an exhibition that has been rendered impossible by Israel’s genocide. But more than this, Art in Ruins is a demonstration of persistence and an act of resistance that shows the unshakeable commitment these artists have to their practice, to their land and culture and ultimately to humanity. It is an honour and a privilege to have got to know Mohamed and alongside Helena, Jennie and Saba from Leeds Palestinian Film Festival and Fenner from HEART, to have played a part in sharing these artists’ work with the people of Leeds.

Gav McIntosh, co-creator Artists Supporting Palestine

Mohamed Harb has curated the show and has selcted works by four prominent fellow artists from Gaza. For obvious reasons it is not possible to ship the artists' original works to Leeds, so instead the exhibition will present twenty-five open edition prints (five works by each of the five artists). The artists' works are shown below, along with a brief profile of each artist and links to more information. The prints have been produced by Scottish artist and long time contributor to Artists Supporting Palestine, Angela McAuley and they will be available to purchase in person at the exhibition, or through an online order form that will be added to this page on the day the exhibition opens.