EXCERPT
‘Instead of a scream’: the Palestinian artist who does a Gaza drawing every day
His studio was flattened, he has had to move his family 10 times, and they now share a house with 25 others. But still Maisara Baroud finds a way to document the fear and destruction he sees all around
Tue 14 May 2024 10.33 EDT
The reality that I lived prior to 7 October has changed. I no longer have a safe house that shelters me and my small family. The rockets have fallen on my drawing studio (my little world) and destroyed it, and the planes have wiped out all the future plans I had for my children. The steel bird killed my small cat Sarah, and chewed her soft meat, before the cat could pass on her seven souls to my children.
The university at which I work as a lecturer has disappeared and lies in ashes. The war machine has distorted the features of my small city and the occupation has destroyed all the beautiful things in it; so the things that are fixed in my memory now lie distorted under the rubble.
In the blink of an eye I became a displaced person in cities that do not know me. I have moved 10 times in search of safety for me and my children, far from the heart of Gaza. I now live in the south of Rafah, in a small house with 25 other people.
The space has become diminished without clean water for drinking and showering, without electricity, fuel or gas for cooking. Like other people, I spend most of my day meeting daily household needs, in the shadow of soaring inflation and scarce goods. But this isn’t all, you have to go in search of survival and safety (which is lacking) for you and your family, and wait for the start of a new day after the end of a long night in Gaza filled with aircraft, rockets and death.
The war has swallowed whole my small dreams, and everything that surrounds us now is covered in blackness. The small heart is no longer able to bear it. For me, sadness is a decision postponed until after the war; I decided to carry on drawing despite the difficulty of the circumstances and kept for myself some time at night after a long day. Drawing has become the special way to help me overcome death for a bit. Drawing, for me, is the way to break the blockade and in this way cancel and challenge the borders and the barriers placed by the occupation.
It is also the only way to announce: “I am still alive.”
• Images by Maisara Baroud form part of Foreigners in Their Homeland, an exhibition of work by Palestinian artists, organised by Palestine Museum US, at the European Cultural Centre, Palazzo Mora, Venice, until 24 November. His Instagram is @maisarart.
Source:
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/14/scream-palestinian-artist-gaza-venice-maisara-baroud
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