“HeART of Gaza” exhibition at Gonzaga Campus
‘The Art of Children from the Heart of the Gaza Strip’ is an international travelling exhibition that will be open until 31 March at the Casina Whitaker on the Gonzaga Campus in Palermo. The name of the exhibition, playing on the words “heart” and “art”, aims to convey, through the eyes of children, a daily life marked by war, loss and fear, but also resilience and hope. The curators of the works are Mohammed Timraz (Gaza, Palestine) and Féile Butler (Ireland). The exhibition has been shown in other Italian cities (Milan, Bologna, Lecco and Bergamo) and European cities. “HeART of Gaza” was created in June 2024 as a collaboration between the young Gazan Mohammed Timraz and the Irish illustrator Féile Butler. The project began with an exchange of drawings between children in Gaza and young artists in Ireland. In Gaza, in the city of Deir al-Balah, Timraz founded the “Artists” Tent’: a creative space where children aged 3 to 17 could meet to draw and express their emotions through artistic expression. This is where the core of the works on display in the exhibition was created. HeART of Gaza aims to: restore dignity and give a voice to children by offering them a space for creative expression that can also speak to adults; raise international awareness of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip; connect global communities and institutions to the reality of Gaza, promoting reflection on childhood, human rights, education and peace through cultural initiatives in the host venues.
The project is the result of collaboration between many cultural associations, local authorities, public libraries, schools and universities. The exhibition at Gonzaga Campus is curated by Prof. Enrico Palumbo together with a group of young people. ‘This work is a perceptive and emotional diary,“ says Palumbo, ‘a unique testimony to the lives of the most honest people in a community in decline and a landscape ravaged by war: an exploration of the radical dimensions of human existence: relationships, bonds, places, home, nature, refuge, threat, fear, destruction, hope”. In the drawings of HeART of Gaza, the home is often wounded, destroyed, on fire. These images pose an important question: ‘What kind of “home” – of world, of relationships, of community – are we building together?’ All the children in this exhibition have been displaced. Many of their homes have been destroyed. Two young artists, Reema and Hammad, were killed, along with almost their entire family, in a bombing on 30 October 2023.
“We want to invite all the young people of the city not to remain indifferent. In March, we will welcome a group of young Palestinians to our campus. In particular, with Prof. Aaron Allegra, we are organising a twinning with a school in the West Bank,’ says Fr. Vitangelo Denora, general director of the Gonzaga Campus. “These are children who, despite everything, continue to go to school. It is a simple and powerful gesture of hope and future that we want to support by bringing students together with students. We must believe in the dreams of young people: many are seeking new paths, choosing dialogue instead of violence, still believing in good even when evil makes more noise. We want to walk alongside them with the language of education, care, shared humanity and peace”.
