Untitled 1 by Mohammed al-Haj

Untitled 1 by Mohammed al-Haj

In this untitled piece, a person walks hunched, a keffiyeh around their neck. They carry a heavy load - they carry the trappings of genocide, the tents, the destruction. But they also carry the cactus, a symbol of sumud, they carry the earth, the animals and their people on their back, through a genocide to an unseen otherside.

Please note that watermark is not part of the printed version.

“Art is a language that needs no translator.” - Mohammed al-Haj

Mohammed Al-Haj is a Palestinian artist who had until recently lived in Gaza City. His family fled to the Nuseirat Camp in the 1948 Nakba. In 1982, he was born in Libya and lived there until the end of 1995 when he returned to Gaza with his family. He was a member of the Faculty of Fine Arts, specializing in art education at Al-Aqsa University.

Through his love and dedication to art, he has contributed diversely to various artistic styles ranging from realism to symbolic expressionism, and even abstract art, reaching into pop art, printmaking, and sculpture. He has held four solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions, workshops, and artistic activities both inside and outside Palestine. He had the opportunity to participate in the prestigious Venice Biennale in Italy in 2022, as part of the first Palestinian pavilion, invited by the Palestinian Museum in America. One of his contributions to the Biennale was an extension of his artistic project "Displacement," addressing the concept of migration and forced displacement of populations due to wars and political conflicts in the Middle East. In Gaza City, he had an artist studio that also served as a community space for fellow artists and art lovers. The studio, located next to al Shifa hospital was bombed by Israel, destroying all of his paintings, sculptures and supplies.