Art in Resistance for Palestine

Abu Faisal, the visual artist committed to Gaza and Palestine.
His artworks travel the world, as art becomes resistance against war.

Above all, art and its artists as intellectuals oppose and condemn all death among peoples, all wars that devastate the innocence of childhood and massacre human conscience and dignity anywhere in the world. Where is Peace for the people? Buried in the cemetery of oblivion under the impunity of death from the imposed war that prevails in the 21st century, the artist, from his deepest essence of freedom, unequivocally condemns acts of hatred, terrorism, and violence in all their forms against any people in the world, says visual and plastic artist Abu Faisal, who has created more than 2,000 works of art, visual and urban art, committed to the Palestinian people and peace, with their tragedy under the 75-year Israeli colonialist occupation of this permanent Nakba. Born on March 30 (1971), a coincidence of fate that coincides with Palestinian Land Day, he championed the Palestinian cause and human rights from the age of 14. During his youth, he served in the Palestinian Information Office, which would become the first PLO delegation-representative in Argentina in the 1980s. Among his roles as an intellectual, he founded two independent Palestinian news agencies and the Palestinian news newspaper "Palestine Liberation." He is also a political writer on Middle Eastern affairs for various international TV and radio news networks and a lecturer. He was a writer and artist, an honorary member of the General Federation of Palestinian Trade Unions in the Gaza Strip. He is also celebrating 10 years since he became the first Latin American artist to go on a 53-day hunger strike in 2013 in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners and to request the exchange of his own life for that of a fellow Palestinian held captive in the jails of the Israeli occupation regime.

Her works represent the historical memory of the tragedy of Palestinian childhood, through a girl running on an overturned war tank, while bombs fall on her and on the blurred image of children running under the war. Just seeing her says it all. The overturned war tank of the occupation is the defeat of colonialism and war in Palestine, the Girl, the Palestine of Peace, is the witness of her time. Generations of Palestinian children have been born under the bombs and destruction of the Israeli army occupation. More than 80% of children in Gaza live with Gaza syndrome, living with panic attacks and fear of any noise, because they are reminded of the sound of bombs on their homes and the death of their families and friends. Generations of Palestinians who never knew freedom, only oppression. Since 2000, more than 3,000 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli air bombs, by tank shells from the occupation, and by the rifle bullets of the colonialist occupation army in the Gaza Strip and the Occupied West Bank.

His works reflect the Guernica of this time, the Gaza Strip, a permanent Guernica, before the eyes and silence of humanity. More than two million inhabitants live in the largest open-air prison in the world, just 365 square kilometers in area; half of the population are minors and children. The committed artist is a witness to his time; his works of art must be the historical memory of the people. Today, more than ever, the Palestinian people require the commitment of artists in their creation to bear witness to so many crimes, systematic killings under bombs and the destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, so much ethnic cleansing, apartheid, torture, tears, and death, and to demand peace before the eyes of the world.

Every Tuesday at 3:00 PM Algerian time, for more than 120 weeks, his program "Art and Culture of the World" has been broadcast from Algiers on Radio Algeria International since 2020, coordinated by Algerian journalist Thouraya Boudjema. The program embraces the artist's leftist intellectual commitment to the cause of the Palestinian people and the history of fine arts, as well as anti-colonialist intellectuals and writers committed to their peoples, such as Frantz Fanon for the liberation of Algeria from French colonialism, and Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani, among others.

He is the author of "The Algiers Declaration: Art in Resistance for Free Palestine," a true manifesto of the artist's intellectual commitment to his time. It was broadcast from Algeria in Spanish, and was heard in every city and home in Algeria, and has also been broadcast to Latin America and Spain.

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