Friday, January 30th at 9:30 am, the press presentation of the international traveling exhibition "HeArt of Gaza", which will be open to visitors until March 31st at the Gonzaga Campus Palermo.
PALERMO - HeART of Gaza – The Art of Children from the Heart of the Gaza Strip - is the international traveling exhibition that will be open to visitors until March 31st.
heart of gaza palermo
The aim is to never tire of breaking indifference, moving beyond hearsay or superficial "truces" and creating deep emotional connections between those who do not dare to look and those who have experienced the humanitarian tragedy firsthand, focusing on art as a universal human language of care, memory, and hope.
The presentation of the exhibition is scheduled for Friday, January 30th, at 9:30 am, at the Casina Whitaker of the Gonzaga Campus. The presence of journalists is welcome. The invitation, open to the entire city, is addressed not only to civil and religious authorities, but also to teachers and principals of Palermo schools so that it can then be extended to the children and young people of our city. The exhibition will also be open during the Campus open day on Saturday, January 31st.
The name of the exhibition, playing with the words "heart" and "art", aims to tell, through the eyes of children, a daily life marked by war, loss, fear, but also resilience and hope. The curators of the works are Mohammed Timraz (Gaza, Palestine) and Féile Butler (Ireland). The exhibition, hosted at the Gonzaga Campus, has been in other Italian cities (Milan, Bologna, Lecco and Bergamo) and European cities.
"HeART of Gaza" was born in June 2024 from the collaboration between the young Gazan Mohammed Timraz and the Irish illustrator Féile Butler. The project starts from an exchange of drawings between children from Gaza and young artists in Ireland: a human, spontaneous and creative response to the dramatic conditions in which children live in the Gaza Strip, severely affected by the conflict and the worsening humanitarian conditions. In Gaza, in the city of Deir al Balah, Timraz founded the "Tent of Artists: a creative space where children, from 3 to 17 years old, were able to meet to draw and express their emotions through artistic expression. From that place was born the core of the works exhibited in the exhibition.
HeART of Gaza wants to: restore dignity and voice to children, offering heart of gaza them a space for creative expression that can also speak to adults; raise awareness among the international public about the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip; connect global communities and institutions to the reality of Gaza, promoting reflections on childhood, human rights, education and peace through cultural initiatives in the host locations. The project is the result of collaboration between many cultural associations, local authorities, civic libraries, schools and universities.
The management and teachers of the Campus, having had the opportunity to see and visit the exhibition, wanted to bring it to Palermo, to a place of growth and training, to restart a message of humanity and hope from here. The exhibition at the Gonzaga Campus is curated by Prof. Enrico Palumbo together with some young people. "This work is a perceptive and emotional diary - says Prof. Palumbo - a unique testimony of the life of the most upright people in a disintegrating community and in a landscape overwhelmed 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 house is often wounded, destroyed, on fire. These images ask us 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 October 30, 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 organizing a twinning with a school in the West Bank - says Fr. Vitangelo Denora, general director of the Gonzaga Campus -. They are young people 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 looking for 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