Fuad Alymani: GAZA!

Artworks
Exhibition date
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Fuad Alymani - GAZA!

The child's lifeless body floats as if levitating in a red empty space over a stylized children's drawings. A bicycle, a boat, a house, a tree, a bed. Fragments from a child's world shattered by war. Another child with a pacifier in his mouth. A hole in his chest, through which we can see a horizon of a desolate landscape. A child with an aerial bomb pointed at his head. The protagonists of Fuad Alymani's drawings are Palestinian children, who represent almost half of the population in Gaza. Their lives were already difficult before the current conflict, but since last October they have turned into a nightmare. Thousands have died under the rubble of their homes, killed by bombs in refugee camps, but also in hospitals, others are dying of malnutrition. 

Alymani infuses his images with his own experience of being Palestinian from the West Bank – desperately caught in the position of the onlooker on the tragedy in Gaza. The artist’s every line resonates with a suffering that lies beyond words, a scream into an impassive void.

According to UN reports, Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip have killed more than 36 000 Palestinians since last October, more than half of them women and children. This figure does not include deaths due to malnutrition or diseases that would normally be treatable. The International Court of Justice in The Hague has called on Israel to immediately stop the fighting in Rafah, but as this text is being written, Israel is not relenting in its attacks on densely populated areas, to which more than a million people have already fled from other parts of the Gaza Strip before the war. As you read these lines, more innocents are dying. 

The exhibition GAZA!, also aims to support humanitarian organisations active in Gaza including Doctors Without Borders. This internationally renowned network of physicians currently working in the Gaza Strip has been monitoring on the ground the overwhelming impact of Israeli military operations on the Palestinian civilian population and has repeatedly called on both fighting sides to establish a ceasefire and allow transport of much larger amount of humanitarian aid. They are witnessing the complete disintegration of the local health system. Between October 2023 and June 2024, they have already been forced to leave 14 health facilities. Access to medical care in Gaza is limited and the space to provide it is shrinking.

"Civilians are being massacred. They are being pushed into areas they were told would be safe, only to be subjected to constant air strikes and heavy fighting," says Chris Lockyear, Secretary General of Doctors Without Borders. "Many families are crowded into tents and living in extremely difficult conditions," he adds, noting that the longer the war continues, the more civilians who face a relentless display of collective punishment will die.

In the context of Czech politics, the exhibition joins voices appealing to the local politicians to use their influence as an ally of Israel to call for an end to the brutal war in Gaza, whose victims are tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians. The GAZA! exhibition also calls upon every one of us. Art cannot stop the bombs, heal the wounded or feed the hungry. But it can give a voice to those who suffer. It can make them visible on the streets of Prague and move us to action.

That's why this exhibition has an exclamation point.

Curator: Zuzana Štefková

Nataša Yamani about the exhibition:

The images testifying to the genocide in Gaza that have flooded our screens have been no less than horrifying. Via live stream, the world is witnessing the extermination of a people. Artist Fuad Alymani, stylistically oscillating between feverish realism and symbolic nightmare, deconstructs snapshot images from social media and news outlets by drawing them. This creates a twofold effect. Firstly, the viewership of these instant images is prolonged. Rather than becoming ghostly remnants of a distant unrelatable reality, the images retain their haptic power over the spectator and immerse one into the unfolding narrative. Secondly, Alymani infuses the depictions with his own experience of being Palestinian from the West Bank – desperately caught in the position of the onlooker on the tragedy in Gaza. The artist’s every line resonates with a suffering that lies beyond words, a scream into an impassive void. We emerge from Alymani’s works shaken to the core, broken apart only to be fused together in order to share the story, to not look away from the past / present of Palestine, to collectively yearn for an alternate future.

Where you can donate to help the people of Palestine:

Doctors Without Borders Czech Republic

https://www.lekari-bez-hranic.cz/clanek/darujte-na-pomoc-lidem-v-palest…

Doctors Without Borders

https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/

People in Need

https://www.clovekvtisni.cz/

Charity of the Czech Republic

 

The project is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the City of Prague and the Municipal District of Prague 7. Media partners of the project are Artmap, Radio 1, GoOut.

photo of the exhibition at Artwall: Martin Micka

photo of the discussion: Jan Černý, Klára Kusá

Photos of the exhibition