Creativity under Occupation: Five Palestinian creatives discuss the highs and lows of working in the West Bank and Gaza

As everyone introduced themselves over the somewhat labyrinthine email thread I organised for this feature, some of the creatives asked questions of each other. Aya Faour from Nöl Collective, a feminist and political fashion brand based in Ramallah, asked Malak Mattar, a feminist artist born and raised in Gaza, about the importance of including her Palestinian identity in her paintings. Representing her identity through her work was “unquestionable”, Malak replied. “First, growing up in Palestine and celebrating the Palestinian holidays and culture, has inspired my identity as well as a love of the land and a longing for freedom,” she says. “Moreover, Palestinian identity is at risk as our culture has been threatened by appropriation and theft for over 70 years. It’s important for artists to paint their realities, their struggles and joy. And this is what the reality of Palestine is, pain and joy.”

The threat of appropriation of Palestinian culture was an issue raised by other creatives too. Tatreez (Palestinian cross stitch embroidery) is a tradition that was deeply rooted in the identity of different Palestinian villages prior to the foundation of Israel in 1948. After hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed or depopulated to make way for the new state, tatreez became a creative symbol of resistance. Nowadays, the craft is “often appropriated by Israeli designers”, says the founder of Nöl Collective, Yasmeen Mjalli. The political fashion collective is dedicated to preserving crafts like tatreez and “illuminating the stories behind both the people and the crafts of Palestine”, she continues. “The crafts are beautiful in and of themselves but they tell a larger story of a history, feminism and geo-politics – elements of fashion which are unique for our customers to think about when buying and wearing our pieces.”

By connecting craftspeople and women’s cooperatives “scattered across Palestine” to make each garment they sell, the rhizome-like structure of the collective subverts the isolation instated by military checkpoints, dividing up the land of Palestine. This doesn’t come without its challenges: “From mailing packages out to finding a payment platform which doesn’t engage in fintech apartheid (operating in Israel but not Palestine), we encounter roadblocks at every stage of production”, Yasmeen says.

Transporting physical artwork from the besieged Gaza strip has provided an even bigger challenge for the Gaza-based artists we spoke to. Political artwork is often stopped at Israeli mail offices due to censorship, points out Malak. And, as highlighted by Euro-Med Monitor’s chairman Ramy Abdu last year, Israel tightened its restrictions on mail delivery to and from Gaza across the Erez border, allowing only paper mail through. Not only does this cause problems for people waiting for visas, passports or important medication, but it also makes it “very difficult to get the paintings out of Gaza for display or sale”, says multidisciplinary artist Mahmoud Alhaj, “especially the large sizes, due to the high cost of transportation and security measures.”

“It’s complicated to be a painter in an isolated area,” Mahmoud continues, “because good tools are scarce and expensive.” But the artist takes it all in his stride and refuses to be deterred from his creative practice, adding: “I hate to be presented in any media platform as a victim." Initially starting up as a painter, he has now turned to using digital imagery found “in the backdoors of internet searches” to get around the scarcity of resources and to “keep pace with the crazy flow of events and images” around him. He’s also been known to make art out of found objects he gathers from the streets. For his project Fragile, he used empty medication packages to create a series of Gazan cityscapes. This choice of material highlights both the physical impacts of occupation (by mimicking the war-torn buildings of the city) and the lack of mental health care for Gazans, which forces them to turn to over-the-counter medication to deal with the stress of daily life.

“An important aspect of the radio is the solidarity and the moments of togetherness that have been embedded within our programme”, Elias continues. The foundation of Radio Alhara coincided with the announcement of Israel’s plans to illegally annex 30 per cent of the West Bank, backed by Trump’s America. Radio Alhara resolved to take creative action against this: “We decided to stop our programme and open up the waves of the radio to protest these illegal and oppressive actions. The protest took the form of a four-day lineup of artists and DJs from across the world that came together against this project, as well to mirror other forms of oppression and injustices that are local in the context they're living in.” The project was a huge success and reached 17,000 listeners from over 100 countries in four days. Since then, Radio Alhara has continued its musical activism, and last year their efforts sparked an international solidarity movement, which they called the Sonic Liberation Front.

Whether acting as individuals or collectivity, with a paintbrush or a mixing deck, the creatives we spoke to gave us a revealing glimpse at the vibrant cultural scene in Palestine happening now. Their accounts shed light on how continual military harassment and infuriating daily challenges make it impossible to develop a creative practice without ingenuity, determination and imagination. With a creative range crossing the fields of art, fashion, music and graphic design, everyone had diverse inspirations and motivations for their work. The unifying factor is that the very act of creativity under occupation is in itself a form of resistance. It's a refusal to be dominated and a proclamation that Palestine and its culture are still very much here, and not about to be intimidated into silence.