Art for Gaza – Genocide Comes as No Surprise

Tuesday, 17. June 2025 – Sunday, 22. June 2025

Dear art enthusiast, the art world, as you well know, largely revolves around three things: images, how they are labelled, and the scandals these provoke.

Last year, for instance, Ai Wei Wei, the art word darling whose provocative and conscientious political work is always good for a juicy scandal, was canceled for one single tweet that wasn’t even about his art. The art world’s response: … nil, nada, zero. It turned its back in complete and utter silence. The message of this imposing backside was loud and clear: “Ceci n’est pas un scandale.” We, however, looking at that image, point out that the art world misses a backbone. It is their betrayal of moral conscience that is the scandal.

In search for the art world’s backbone, we may look at the art that does provoke a scandal. Gallery walls, of course, still find room for the occasional fruit-based provocation. A banana taped to a wall makes headlines across the world. But where is the art that addresses the so-called “controversial” topics that actually plague our world today yet hardly elicit any artistic response in whitewashed spaces? Where are the exhibitions about the siege, starvation, and systemic erasure of the Palestinian people and their history and culture? We are not here to condemn your occasional pleasure in fruit-based provocations. We are here to mix up the fruit. Watermelons, we insist, are just as beautiful, interesting, at times scandalous, and delicious, as bananas. Come see art that doesn’t ignore what’s just a few taps away on your phone! Palestine is beautiful and art about Palestine can be beautiful, interesting, and engaging. We are not lying, when we explicitly say: “this is not a watermelon.” Come see what it may be.

Artists: Mona ام Omar, Jasper van Putten, Theodora Herzl and Schlomo Goldwasser, Sabrina Isabelle Müller, Anonymous

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