Solidarity with Palestine at the XV Havana Biennial

Alba and María Fernanda, 12 years old, students who have just started at the historic San Alejandro Academy of Visual Arts, discovered two other fellow students at that school, in the midst of a celebration of creation and freedom of expression.

Their school, San Alejandro, an immense gallery of works by adolescents and young people, joins as a sub-venue to the activities of the XV Havana Biennial.

Without knowing each other, they created their works around the situation that the Palestinian people are experiencing.
An immense portrait pays tribute to Heba Kamal Abu Nada, a poet and novelist martyred by Israeli bombings in 2023, a work by Amalia, 18 years old, third year of sculpture

It was Heba who, at 32 years old, wrote the night before her martyrdom:

“The night in the city is dark, except for the shine of the missiles;
silent, except for the sound of the bombing;
terrifying, except for the quiet promise of prayer;
black, except for the light of the martyrs.
Good night.”

II
Forced to dream

A small enclosure, the ruins of an aggression, one of many, of many wars, the one that indiscriminately unleashes its hatred on Palestinian mothers.

On the walls you can see the images of a child and a man, the portraits of a house in which nothing remains, only those images that speak of the Palestinian lives torn from this land by horror.

Next there are two bands that say “Do not pass” in Spanish and English, as if speaking of the houses besieged by the occupation in the Gaza Strip.

The moving performance revives the drama of Palestinian mothers facing the massacre of their children who wrap their helpless bodies in shrouds. On the ground, you can see the destruction of what was once the home, the torn drawing, stones, cardboard, windows and walls show the footprints and hands of those who lived there and left a cry so that the world does not remain silent and speaks of those who existed there.

The mother with her kufiya, the identity scarf of the Palestinian people, shudders at the noise of the planes and the bombs, she embraces and rocks the martyred child in the midst of the sobs of her land, sharing her pain with another woman, with you, the spectator, who must not remain silent, as Alejandra, an 18-year-old student of the engraving specialty, asks us to do.

III
Phoenix

A small support acts as a table, it is completely covered by a kufiya, as if giving a hug to the chest of whoever carries it.

A large stone, reminiscent of rubble, shows what the camera lens will reveal: red flowers that shelter, between pain and tenderness, tiny shrouds on it. The lens, we, we who have witnessed a genocide on social media and television, focuses on a large Palestinian flag, covered with the flowers that shelter the shrouds of thousands of martyred children.

On the black side of the colors of the Palestinian flag, images of the bombs that the United States provides to “Israel,” the hand that simulates the trigger and the gun that kills life, in another altarpiece on the flag itself, the fists of the heroic resistance and the young people who raise them, a dove with the heart of Palestine calls for peace. On the green stripe of the large flag, life, land, olive trees, occupation.
In the middle of the red triangle, devastation, attacked hospitals, martyred families… five doves that cry out. Red flowers as a hope of achieving freedom that will rise like the Phoenix.

The installation was created by the young women who had just begun their studies at school.

The three installations at the San Alejandro Academy for this XV Havana Biennial are free creations by Cuban young people and adolescents as an expression of their sensitivity and solidarity with the people of Palestine.

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