Award 20: Gaza Biennele

The Gaza Biennale is a collective project of artists from Gaza that has emerged into a global art event. Since April 2024, artists from Gaza began to gather together under a single project, to find ways to utilize art to resist this genocide. Many artists in Gaza have been working throughout this war, defying all challenges, creating works that remind us that art is essential to life. While war has scattered and displaced our people, the biennale gathers over 60 artists on a single platform, uniting their voices.

In January 2024 we supported Jinnaah UK to create two events in London. First at ICA chosen as a location because inside the building was the new contemporaries exhibition sponsored by Bloomberg. In addition to showing the Biennale the team behind it were calling on ICA and New Contemporaries to drop ties with Bloomberg Philanthropies due to their financial ties with development initiatives in Israel and alleged involvement in facilitating settlement infrastructure in the West Bank. The second location was Horniman Museum where there is a collection of Palestinian artifacts not on display and the event called on Horniman to step up it's support of Palestinian artists at this time.

An exhibition of work from artists in Gaza projected onto the wall outside. Each image was named in English and Arabic, the title, exhibition title, date it was created and current location of the artwork read out and then the artwork shown. If the artist had written a description this was also read aloud while the artwork was on view. Artists in Gaza are working as their cultural infrastructure, artworks, monuments, museums and heritage sites are almost completely destroyed. In a state of constant fear. Yet they still create. Seeds of hope for humanity. 

You can follow Jinnaah UK here: https://www.instagram.com/gazabiennale_jinnaahuk/