Basel El Maqousi says he is amazed to be alive at the end of each day. Living in Gaza, where more than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s assault, and with the tally rising still, his amazement returns, he says, with each morning light.
“The war began and life stopped. There is no work or art, we just try to run from one place to another, searching for salvation from the bombing and killing that pursues us. We walk quickly to search for water and food, and running has become the master of all times,” he says.
“In these moments, we lose a part of our humanity, our dignity and everything that is beyond endurance.”
El Maqousi is among nearly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza living under the forced displacement and Israeli bombing that has reduced much of the territory to rubble.
His work is among that of four Gazan artists who feature in an exhibition entitled Under Fire at the Darat al Funun in Amman, Jordan. All are still creating and using whatever materials they can find, despite living under the daily bombardment.
With his black charcoal pencil, El Maqousi has created haunting images of the catastrophic war. His work depicts men stripped and blindfolded, women in mournful embraces and children with missing limbs amid a sea of tents.
“My art is a message I carry to the world that we, the people of Palestine, are under occupation and deserve to live with dignity and freedom like the rest of the peoples of the world,” he says.
Before October 2023, El Maqousi worked as an art teacher in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahia. He has been exhibited internationally and has attended residencies in India, Algeria and the US.
Now, having been displaced from Khan Younis, Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat and Az-Zawaida, El Maqousi says he maintains his humanity through the more than 100 workshops he has organised with children, mothers and people with disabilities, entitled Artistic Residence, Not Displacement.
He began by gathering children near his tent and giving them the materials to create as their mothers looked on, smiling at the sight of their brief respite. One of the most difficult workshops was with mothers, he says, who cried as they drew their homes and dreams. He cried with them.
“This is what I do during the war. I know very well that it is not much, but I also know that the children were given the opportunity for some time to forget the war, the fear, and the hunger. To forget the time, the suffering and the nightmares day and night,” he says.
“I have nothing else to do and I love what I do.”
The Under Fire exhibition is the latest example of Darat Al Funun’s dedicated programming in solidarity with Gaza, says its arts and culture director, Khaled al-Bashir.
“This particular display is especially important within this context, given the circumstances under which these artists continue to create – and their remarkable determination to do so, from within Gaza and under displacement. Needless to say, it also emerges from the absolute necessity to centre Gazan voices at the moment, and the urgency of doing so,” says Bashir.
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All four artists in the exhibition were students at a summer programme run by Darat Al Funun under the Syrian artist Marwan Kassab Bachi, and went on to help establish two of Gaza’s major art spaces and collectives. Sohail Salem and Raed Issa were co-founders of the Eltiqa Group, and El Maqosui and Majed Shala helped to create Shababeek for Contemporary Art – both of which have been destroyed in the war.
On display are Salem’s pen drawings in blue, black and red ink, inside numerous Unrwa notebooks. He describes his work as “a message to the world” and “a scream for help”.
“It was a mission for me to release a visual store of misery I had stored in my mind. This was most brutal when I was forced to pass over the bodies of martyrs during the displacement. Overcrowding of the displaced and listening to the news on the radio at high volume, I tried to separate myself from my surroundings every morning and draw,” says Salem, who buys his tools from a street vendor in Deir al-Balah, where he lives in a garage.
In January 2023, Salem was a university art teacher. He was arrested by the Israel Defense Forces at his family home in Al-Rimal, separated from his family and handcuffed and blindfolded before being interrogated. He recalls how a letter of the Hebrew alphabet was written on his forehead, leaving men around him to speculate if this meant he would be killed first. He was later released and able to find his family in Deir al-Balah, where they had fled.
“The idea of drawing seemed ridiculous. What could I draw in such circumstances? And why? My brain was damaged from the sound of intense bombing that still resonated in my head,” says Salem. Before the war he taught at Al-Aqsa University, and had his work exhibited locally and internationally.
“These small notebooks and pens were my refuge, and I placed them in my small bag without worry, as if I were writing my memoirs daily.”
The exhibition also includes Issa’s portraits of women and children, using the only materials he could find – he draws on medicine packaging, using karkadeh (hibiscus flower tea) and pomegranate juice alongside ink.
“In the most recent displacement, I couldn’t bring my art supplies with me,” says the text accompanying Issa’s work in Amman. “Using what was available, I created several places on stomach medicine packages, while patients suffer from stomach issues – and all of Gaza suffers from the hunger of empty stomachs.”
Shala and his family were displaced from Deir al-Balah by heavy shelling, leaving behind their home, his studio and 30 years of artwork inside. He went on creating, using “whatever he could find” – scraps of paper, watercolours and pens, creating colourful works ranging from the cacti he missed from their balcony to the familiar streets of Gaza.
“As the war went on, I started to document the real-life scenes of displacement and exile that have affected every part of our daily lives,” says the gallery text accompanying his work.
“These scenes remind me of the stories our elders told us about the 1948 Nakba, but what we’re living through now feels far more devastating, far worse than what people endured back then.”