Exhibition "Gaza, art as lungs"

Exhibition "Gaza, art as lungs" talks with curators Eliane Beytrison and Shahd Wadi The exhibition “GAZA, art as lungs” brings together works by a collective of Palestinian artists from Gaza produced during the genocide, despite the bombings, forced displacement, horror and anguish. Deprived of water, food and electricity, the artists continued to draw and write with whatever materials were available - with pens, coffee grounds, tea and pomegranate juice, in school notebooks distributed by the United Nations, medicine packaging and whatever paper they could find.

Mohamed Abusal, Dena Mattar, Mohammad Al Hawajri, Sohail Salem and Raed Issa were born and live in Gaza. In 2002, they founded the ElTiqa collective, and in 2010 they opened a gallery in the center of Gaza City. Comprising exhibition rooms and workshops, it has become one of the most important spaces in the field of visual arts in Gaza. The collective's gallery and workshops were destroyed by Israeli bombings in December 2023, as were much of the artists' works. Displaced in tents after having lost their homes, gallery and studios, the artists continued to produce works that bear witness to the genocide and that express the moments of escape and freedom that the act of creating allows.
The exhibition is made up of reproductions of works and texts produced since October 2023 and sent via social media or WhatsApp, curated by Swiss artist Eliane Beytrison, who helped create the collective and has worked with the artists for more than two decades. The organization of the exhibition in Portugal is by the artist, researcher and professor Graça Magalhães, in collaboration with the Collective for the Liberation of Palestine.
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