30 Palestinian artists have exhibited their works at P21 gallery

This is who we are: Welcome to Palestine
Where names become numbers, homes turn to rubble and hopes are stolen by the echo of F35 fighter jets. The founder of the Palestinian Museum in the United States sat down with The Prisma to tell the harrowing stories unfolding in Gaza, and to shine a light on the art that documents them.
It was a Code Blue case. That means that under normal circumstances the young man might have lived. But the bombing of Gaza relegated him to the back of the priority list; those most likely to survive were treated first.

By the time doctor Khalil Khalidi was able to treat him, it was too late. The nameless boy, classified as number 991, lay in the morgue for three days. No family came forward to claim him.

This deeply troubled Khalidi. The young doctor-artist had drawn blood from the boy before he died and added heparin to stop the clotting. He then used the blood to colour a drawing he had made of an angel.

“These are the kinds of stories that are coming out of Gaza right now,” says Faisal Saleh, curator of “Art of Palestine | from the river to the sea” and founder of the Palestine Museum US.

“There are not just one or two, in fact there are thousands, but there are not enough places to document them. That doctor had the chance to leave Gaza after 7 October, but he refused. “He still thinks about that boy every day,” he explains.

Saleh’s parents were forced to flee their home village of Salama during the Nakbah of 1948, when some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their ancestral land by the rulers of the new state of Israel. They sought refuge in the West Bank, where young Faisal grew up.
Faisal Saleh, founder of the Palestine Museum US.

“The conditions were tough,” he says. “My family lost everything and had to start from scratch. Plus, I was the last of 11 siblings.”

After moving to the United States in 1969, Saleh went to college and found success as an entrepreneur. He opened the Palestine Museum US in 2018 and is mounting a new exhibition in London.

Saleh says he collects Palestinian art to send a simple but challenging message: “We are here.”

“The first theme of our exhibition in London is an effort to prove our existence, to prove that we are human beings. We do this by trying to answer the question: Who are you?” he says.
“You might think it’s obvious, but it’s not for many people. It’s hard to get mainstream media interested in the Palestinian issue, so people default to the Israeli narrative. That’s why it’s especially important that we have a strong presence in the art world, to humanize Palestinians to a global audience.”

Nearly 30 Palestinian artists have exhibited their work at P21 gallery. There is a wide range of visual art forms, such as acrylic and oil paintings, watercolours, sculptures and maps of Palestine showing how many villages have been forcibly lost to Israeli soldiers and settlers. But, according to Saleh, the art form is not what really matters.
“Spring Mourning,” by Haya Kaabneh.

“It’s about the content and the subject matter – what is being conveyed. Any form of art is good. It’s the message and the individuals depicted that really deserve our attention; what the artist felt and the emotions he tries to convey, and how he formulates it with the art he knows how to make.”

The second theme of the exhibition is Gaza. Saleh notes that what is happening there now is a “wake-up call” to the world that Palestinians have been under attack since the Nakbah in 1948 and under occupation since the end of the Six-Day War in 1967.

“We have a very large map of Palestine on the floor of the exhibition hall. “People can walk on it and see Palestine as it was in 1948, before Israel took over, changed all the names and destroyed the villages. Seeing the real Palestinian names is very striking,” says Saleh. He adds that some of the works provide optimism for the future, despite shattered dreams and crushed homes.

“Some works have bright, cheerful colours and depict beautiful Palestinian landscapes. There is a painting of two Gazan girls wearing headscarves, smiling and looking cheerful at a time when they have no apparent reason to be. There is one with a group of children playing behind shops, whose families have been evacuated. You can see their blankets and bedspreads hanging on clotheslines.”
She admits, however, that much of the art is “very sombre and dark”. One of the works by artist Amal Sobeh shows four children hanging from their hopes and dreams, represented by red balloons tied around their necks. The white balloons are placed against a dark background so that the hopes and aspirations are juxtaposed against the bleak, black surroundings from which they emerge.

Other artworks in the exhibition include a tapestry of Palestinian history, 100 pieces of embroidery that bring to life a particular moment in time. There are drawings made by children who were invited to draw what they saw around them as a form of therapy.

There are also recent photographs from Gaza that reflect the pain and agony of the people living there, but Saleh says they are not gory or graphic.

“We want to portray more human suffering, human tensions that can be related. We want to show the extent to which Gazans face difficulties in their daily lives, from trying to make a living to keeping their homes and gardens in order. Some photos were taken by an American artist using an old camera.

With such a wide selection of art, this curator hopes to unravel the dreams and aspirations of the Palestinian people, as well as their suffering, from the time of the Nakbah in 1948 to the present day. The exhibition does well to show a complete Palestinian panorama, because according to Saleh, “there is no Palestinian art exhibition that can ignore the past or the present.”
“Watercolor on paper,” by Bayan Abu Nahle, Gaza, 2024,

Part of Saleh’s goal is to show the world the artistic brilliance of Palestinians, who are often only portrayed as terrorists or helpless victims. He also shares his disappointment that the Western media has largely ignored his efforts in this regard: “I am very surprised by the lack of interest from the mainstream media. It is very difficult to get them to pay attention.”
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