Mohamed Moghari, A Child’s Quest, 2025, Original: acrylic on canvas (All photos by me)

A young boy in a rumpled maroon T-shirt and jeans pushes a wheelchair filled to the brim with heavy yellow plastic water jugs. His face is a spectral smear with a hint of a nose, a curved ear, and a slight, concentrated frown. These indistinguishable features not only obscure his identity but mark his effort as beyond a personal plight; instead, this is a common struggle. His feet, along with the wheelchair, vanish into leaky painterly drips, as if he’s fading like a ghost into the abstract landscape, a slather of alternately bland and harsh yellows, browns, whites, and blacks. Though he makes this trek to survive, his partial disappearance marks his existence as precarious, fleeting.

This painting—Mohamed Moghari’s A Child’s Quest—made me forcefully tamp down tears in the Gaza Biennale’s New York Pavilion, entitled From Gaza to the World, at Recess, part of an expansive global exhibition organized by artists currently living in or displaced from Gaza. Perhaps my weepiness derived from Moghari’s modest rendering of persistence amid the backdrop of immense suffering (though that suffering, other than the boy’s hunched form, mostly happens off the picture plane). Maybe it was knowing that, as UN experts reported this July, that between the demolishment of Gaza’s infrastructure and the blockade, “Israel is using thirst as a weapon to kill Palestinians,” which is a war crime under the ICC’s Rome Statute. Or the painting reminded me of Amir, the boy gathering cast-off foodstuffs whom Sergeant Anthony Aguilar met while working for the shifty Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The artist’s simple description of the work, painted from his own displacement location at Deir al-Balah Girls’ School, could also have been responsible:

“This scene in A Child’s Quest repeats daily—not once or twice, but many times. It represents one of the tasks and responsibilities of a displaced child standing for hours just to secure water for the needs of the tent.”

Or the frog in my throat came from, well, all of it.

While A Child’s Quest triggered the initial battle to shove down emotion, that painting was certainly not the only tearjerker in the Gaza Biennale, which I saw in its full incarnation in September but remains open in abbreviated form through December. Moghari’s boy was joined by a little orange mewling kitten plucked out of toppled buildings in Yahya Alsholy’s short film Escape from Farida, which, along with its story about a man and his fiancée, marked one of the only hi-res portrayals of Gaza’s wrecking I’ve seen, given Israel’s restriction of journalistic access to the Strip; a small girl with an amputated leg and a boy clutching a disintegrated bouquet of white flowers in a red-toned inferno in Murad Al-Assar’s purposefully naïve paintings that reimagine his children’s drawings; Maysaa Yousef’s tumbling woman, wrapped in a keffiyeh, falling like a doomed Alice in Wonderland, surrounded by the scattered, shattered, collaged scraps of her home, representing how “safety is fragile, and that life can be turned upside down in a moment”; and Mosaab Abusall’s haunting, empty eye-socketed, broken doll faces staring up from the rubble of bombed buildings like countless crushed corpses. Though a visual art exhibition, pops of poetry also described living surrounded by death and destruction. Take Fatema Abu Owda’s poem, corresponding to her literary prints brushed with natural dyes like turmeric and hibiscus, which narrates abandonment by the world, artmaking as a form of witnessing, and the slow, plodding inevitability of certain death (“No one survives here…they just slowly decay”). “I paint so the world can see the real stories happening here/I color because blood cannot be displayed in galleries,” she writes.

Maysaa Yousef, Safety (Upside Down), 2024, original: acrylics, various materials, and collage technique on canvas

Abu Owda’s two lines could be the mission statement of the entire Gaza Biennale, which showcases how artists not only create work about their own genocide but through it. I can’t recall attending an exhibition like this, which explains why I felt so soppy and overwhelmed. Sure, there have been previous shows that incorporated art by civilians who withstood the cataclysm of the United States’ disastrous neocon foreign policy, like MoMA PS1’s Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2011, but that exhibition was staged almost ten years after the War in Iraq. SVA mounted a post-surge exhibition, Testimony to War, related to Iraq in 2008, yet the chosen artists were American rather than those at the receiving end of the brutality. The closest reference I have for the Gaza Biennale is the exhibitions launched in the wake of the Holocaust to educate the public about that genocide, such as Joseph Pulitzer’s 1945 exhibition of photos of liberated concentration camps that inspired Philip Guston. Yet, even these, as well as the art and writing by Holocaust survivors or posthumous works by its victims, emerged after the atrocities were over. In contrast, since Israel’s assault on Gaza is still ongoing, the Gaza Biennale didn’t feel like looking at art in an average exhibition. It was infused with the inescapable knowledge that while I was perusing a show in Brooklyn, these artists, their subjects, their families, and others around them could be shot by the IDF while leaving an aid distribution site, blown to bits, bleeding out in a hospital with no anesthesia, displaced yet again, or, if they’re lucky, living in a tent with little food and water.

There is a more recent comparison I’ve been contemplating since visiting Recess: the Nova Music Festival Exhibition, the roving show documenting the horrors of Hamas’ attack on the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023. And no, not just because I’m stupidly pitting Israelis and Palestinians against one another. Both the Nova Exhibition and the Gaza Biennale attempt to convey horrific contemporary events to a global public. However, the Nova Exhibition was the exact opposite of the Gaza Biennale in its production, budget, visuals, and intended impact. The former, at least in its incarnation I visited on Wall Street, was a high-production, blockbuster immersive exhibition, so over-the-top and club-lit that it resembled those previously popular schlock Instagram “museums” like the Museum of Ice Cream or Glade’s Museum of Feelings, if they tried their hands at plunging viewers into a terrorist attack. After watching a video of happy, dancing festival-goers on October 6, the Nova Exhibition sent attendees into hell. A reproduction of the festival grounds was strewn with tents, underwear, and an errant rifle, illuminated by phones, TVs, and iPad screens, all blaring videos of screaming, indiscriminate killing, and Hamas hostage-taking, punctuated by the noise of gunshots. Another larger room revealed a 9/11 Museum-like display of larger objects, like strobe-lit, bombed-out cars, bullet hole-punctured, tipped-over Porta Johns, a smashed bar, and a lost and found of cast-off items, including purses, hats, and a symbolically loaded table dedicated to shoes.

Osama Husein Al Naqqa, Heavy Hands, 2024, digital drawings

In contrast, the Gaza Biennale presented a humble, rough-and-tumble, DIY curation. As artists in Gaza clearly cannot ship their work abroad, most of the artworks were reproduced through prints and in a slow backroom slideshow, which featured more poignant paintings by Mohamed Moghari, including A Dish for Every Family, illustrating hands clutching the metal bowls recognizable from chaotic photographs of aid distribution. The works themselves also revealed how the artists still in Gaza have to make due with a whole lot less. This was shown most directly in the introductory video in Recess’ entryway, as the included artists take a tour of their studios, many of which have been at least partially ruined. However, certain artists’ chosen mediums also exposed how they continue to portray their experiences through what little they have, such as Osama Husein Al Naqqa’s series of digital drawings. Though so thickly rendered they resemble charcoal or heavy graphite, as seen in the strikingly realistic gaggle of plodding displaced families or the surrealistic, melancholy lineup of disembodied hands reaching out to comfort a white, shrouded body, Al Naqqa created these works on his phone using just his finger.

While Al Naqqa’s drawings do feature scenes of death and mourning, his work, as well as the rest of the New York Pavilion, avoided direct depictions of the more gruesome bloodshed imagery coming out of Gaza. There were no photographs of children with skulls blasted off by American-made weapons or video footage of unspeakable gore, both of which I’ve seen ad nauseam on the Internet. Instead, the artists mainly reproduced the devastation left in its wake, like Al Naqqa’s drawing of a father cradling his dead son’s body, or the constant threat of violent death, as seen in Ahmad Aladawi’s series of wheat-pasted posters that included a man surrounded by a swarm of drones. Destruction was also told, more subtly, through the labels; Many of the artists are alumni from Al-Aqsa University, which was one of the universities deliberately targeted by Israel.

Alaà Alshawa, Fading Gestures: Lifebuoy and Blue Features, 2025, original: watercolor on paper

With the worst carnage at the margins, the Gaza Biennale’s works were somber, silent, and grief-stricken, unlike the Nova Exhibition, which recreated a stroll through the trauma of October 7 like a haunted house and, with it, sparked the corresponding fury and demand for retribution. While emphasizing Israeli resilience, it also depicted not only Hamas, but by proxy, all Palestinians as monsters dead set on inhumane cruelty. The Gaza Biennale, conversely, didn’t strike me as intending to turn viewers against Israeli civilians, but instead, it was a plea for the recognition of Palestinian humanity and the value of their lives. There’s a reason why the artworks were primarily figural, such as Alaà Alshawa’s purple and blue watercolors of melancholy women’s faces covered with flowers, and Maysaa Yousef’s collaged family near their tent. The Nova Exhibition could have chosen to highlight humanity, too, by the way. The most moving part of that show was the series of video interviews with survivors, speaking on their experiences. Yet, this was completely overshadowed by the rest of that overblown propaganda spectacle. Perhaps they didn’t lean on that because Israelis don’t have to convince Americans of their own humanity. Palestinians do. And if you want evidence of its necessity, watch loon Van Jones recently making a funny, alongside smirking Thomas Friedman and a clapping audience, on Real Time with Bill Maher about the perponderance of “dead Gaza baby” content on social media, an observation related to his apparent belief that Iran and Qatar are responsible for blasting Americans with gore videos. And here I thought I was conspiratorial!

Conveying Palestinian humanity is getting harder and harder to accomplish in the United States, with the growing wall of censorship and hasbara, aka Israeli propaganda, produced for both those inside Israel and their allies in the United States. Starting with the former, the Trump administration began with a free speech crackdown bang, targeting pro-Palestinian activists either in or associated with universities, such as the detainment of activist Mahmoud Khalil, an escalation of the Biden administration’s already tenuous grasp on permitting free speech for these anti-war students. However, the expanding digital censorship feels just as insidious, particularly because it’s these platforms on which Palestinians have communicated with the world. One of the biggest is TikTok, which introduced a new “Public Policy Manager for Hate Speech,” Erica Mindell, a former IDF instructor and contractor for the State Department under the Biden administration, tasked with combating antisemitism. What is this new hate speech czar going to do? Well, on September 13, TikTok rolled out some new Community Guidelines, which, in practice, have resulted in many pro-Palestinian accounts getting their content yanked or suppressed, including when they are critical of lobbying demagogues AIPAC. In an eerie interview with Breaking Points, TikTok creator/cutie Guy Christensen revealed that any mention of Hamas requires an immediate follow-up disavowal if you want your content to pass through censors. These new guidelines may be just the beginning, considering the forthcoming purchase of TikTok by a group of investors, including Larry Ellison’s Oracle, with Ellison being the largest private funder of the IDF. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that this sale was nudged through by the Biden administration. Beyond the laughable explanation about being wary of Chinese control of user data (as if our social media companies are not stealing our data), the motivation for this forced sale was an open secret, related to the accessibility of Palestinians documenting their own extermination, which has turned many in younger generations against the continued funding of Israel’s bloody land grabs. Mitt Romney is the one who spilled the beans, bragging that, “Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites–it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts.” So, in comes Ellison and co! Will this be a big deal? Well, Bibi seems to think so! Recently meeting with a cadre of influencers, Prime Minister Netanyahu boasted, “Weapons change over time…the most important ones are the social media…The most important purchase going on right now is TikTok. I hope it goes through because it can be consequential.” Oh, a weapon trained at US, wonderful!

Ahmad Aladawi, By Fire by Blood, 2024, wheat-pasted posters

Just how will TikTok’s takeover be consequential? Well, here’s where the hasbara comes in, using both traditional media and social media as a weapon. Every time I see a new poll exposing Americans’ dwindling support for Israel in every demographic category but Republican boomers, I anticipate that the wave of hasbara is going to get ramped up to levels never before seen. Of course, the Likud party and their supporters in our government will not take these numbers as an impetus to reconsider their actions! So instead, what’s coming is going to be a nefarious combo of desperate and absurd. Case in point: on the traditional media side, we have Larry and his son David Ellison gobbling up media companies left and right, and with it, Paramount Skydance just announced The Free Press’s Bari Weiss as Editor-in-Chief of CBS News. With Weiss at the helm, we can only assume CBS News is going to transform into a Free Press for even older people, an all-“gender ideology”, all-trans people terrorizing bathrooms, all-that 2-year-old is actually Hamas scaremongering for the thirty octogenarians whose TV has been stuck on that channel since 1994.

Other than oligarchs making TV impulse buys, Dropsite cites Haaretz’s reporting that Israel poured an additional $40 mil into its hasbara budget, with $24 million for “global influence campaigns.” Some of that may be going to fringe pro-Israel influencers who are allegedly being paid $7000 a post to make videos like this one by Emily Austin and Xaviaer DuRousseau, which include some of the most unintentionally (?) antisemitic comments I’ve seen under the guise of “yaas queen”/“girl boss” attitude. I’ll admit, I’m also obsessed with these two because they’re so transparently amoral. What will they come up with next?! Then, there’s the “conservative-aligned firm,” Clock Tower X, hired by Israel, which is not only seeking to produce content “tailored to Gen Z audiences across platforms,” but also aims to produce websites and writing that will be gobbled up by Chat GPT to influence the large language model’s base of knowledge. THEN, if you think the Democrats are exempt from this propaganda cash flow free-for-all, you’d be incorrect. SKDKnickerboker, “a top Democratic Party-aligned public relations firm,” registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, with the intention to set loose a “bot-based program” boosting pro-Israel content on social media platforms. They got caught, though, after Sludge reported on this gig, which resulted in the firm dropping Israel as a client. Whoopsie! Still, the fact that it was even being considered should be chilling. Are you creeped out yet? Same!

Firas Thabet, Gaznica, 2025, original: acrylic on canvas, reproduced as tapestry

Now, what does this have to do with art and the Gaza Biennale, more specifically? Well, if social media is out as a platform for communicating the humanity of Palestinians and traditional media has never been that great at it to begin with, there needs to be other methods of communication. This is not going to be any less necessary even if Trump’s 20-point peace plan does occur, as Trump salivates at his new casino and hotel property grounds and Tony Blair leaps from your War on Terror-era flashbacks into a colonial fantasy he’s constructed for himself. The Gaza Biennale certainly offers an alternate, deeply affecting example of how art can communicate Palestinians’ experiences to a public across the world. Admittedly, the audience in Recess, given the sheer amount of artfully arranged keffiyehs, was already concerned with Palestinian lives. The show may have been simply preaching to the choir of the already engaged. Yet, hopefully, this is not the last exhibition of the sort. Come on, other galleries or museums (yes, you, the ones that pretend to be politically engaged), be brave, be bold when it matters now, rather than curating a show of Palestinian art in a decade when the Gaza Strip has already been ethnically cleansed for yet another yellow umbrellaed Mar-a-Lago-esque patio blaring Lee Greenwood! Otherwise, what even is the point?