Heba Zagout: Palestinian artist murdered in Gaza

The Palestinian plastic artist Heba Zagout died along with her two children on October 13 in an air attack, according to her sister and her local media. “My sister, the beloved of my heart and soul, who was martyred today with her children in the aggression against Gaza. Your prayers for mercy and forgiveness for her,” wrote the artist's sister Maysaa Ghazi, through her Facebook account. She joins the writer Heba Abu Nada and thousands of innocent civilian victims of Israeli attacks. She was 39 years old. By ANRed.

Born in Gaza, in the Al Bureij refugee camp in 1984, Zagout showed interest in art from a very young age. In 2003 she received a diploma in Graphic Design from Gaza College. She then studied Fine Arts at Al-Aqsa University, graduating 4 years later in 2007. The following year she began drawing on Palestinian issues, especially the city of Jerusalem.

«Heba was a one-in-a-million talent. "She was able to encapsulate everything it means to be Palestinian and she was able to pour her heart and soul into art," German human rights representative Chris Whitman-Abdelkarim told Middle East Eye. "Many people were attracted to her paintings that were a journey to the cities and villages of Palestine," he added.

"Her work was popular both in Gaza and the West Bank," said Mitri Raheb, a Christian pastor from Bethlehem who founded the Dar Kalima Arts Center that Zagout often frequented. «Art as a therapy to express the dynamics of Gaza that transcends politics. Making art, for Gazans, is a way of representing their own reality and telling their stories," she declared in 2021 in an interview with The Art Newspaper.
In a video she posted two weeks before her death, Zagout commented that she found in art the possibility of sending a message to the outside world from her expression of the Palestinian cause and her identity.

Currently, many and many admirers of her work post many of her paintings on social networks, keeping her legacy alive.

Among others, she published a work that features a sad woman holding a dove of peace with the phrase: “We are always looking for security in our lives. We may find it in love, but we will continue searching.” Also, you can see portraits holding a key: the symbol of Palestinian hope that represents millions of people evicted from their homes who long to return home.