The Sign That Resists: Ayman Al-Hossary's Art in Gaza

Calligraphy Among Rubble and Memory: Art as Resistance in Gaza

There is an artist in Gaza who doesn't just paint. He writes, engraves, and prints. His name is Ayman Al-Hossary, he is 37 years old, and he is one of the most lucid and radical voices in the contemporary Palestinian scene. He has never stopped working, not even during the darkest periods: blackouts, bombings, sieges.

His art is made up of Arabic calligraphy, installations, videos, and performances. But the core is always the same: the written line, the word that becomes image, language as identity. In a context where everything is erased—the houses, the memories, the people—Al-Hossary forcefully reaffirms:

“You will not take away the language, you will not tear out the memory.”

Calligraphy on the Ruins

Al-Hossary does not paint on clean, orderly canvases. His surfaces are often wounded walls, destroyed houses, walls that still bear the scars of explosions.
These cracks are not an obstacle, but the very frame of the work.

The Arabic calligraphy he traces on the walls is not decoration, it is resistance: the curves of the letters, the gaps between one line and the next, the strength of black against the gray of the rubble become an act of denunciation.

Art between Everyday Life and the Siege

His works are born within Gaza, amid restrictions and limits. The time of art there is never linear: it is marked by raids, bombings, and the lack of electricity.

And yet, in the moments stolen from war, Al-Hossary finds the patience to slowly draw the line, to shape a line that refuses to be erased.

In his performances and installations, the obsessive repetition of gestures and words evokes the cyclicality of trauma: the same pain that returns, the same mourning that repeats itself. But it is precisely from this monotony of violence that the urgency of an art that does not surrender arises.

Cultural Resistance

When observing his works, it becomes clear: this is not an art of consolation.
It is not evasion.
It is art as resistance.

Each calligraphic stroke is a political act: it reaffirms the existence of a people, a language, a memory. In places of destruction, where everything seems to scream silence, Al-Hossary responds with words.

In an interview with the Institut Français de Jerusalem, the artist explained that his work is a way of restoring dignity to urban space, transforming ruin into a living surface, a shared testimony.

It is the purest form of what can be called cultural resistance: it cannot stop the tanks, but it can prevent them from erasing memory.

Why This Relates to Us

Today, the image of war risks becoming consumer goods—a news item that quickly passes through the daily feed. Al-Hossary's art, on the contrary, forces us to look without running away: it invites us to stop, read, and listen. It is an uncomfortable and necessary art.

To speak of Ayman Al-Hossary is to remember that culture is always political, especially when it arises in a context of occupation and violence.

His written walls in Gaza ask us not to forget, not to become accustomed.
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