'Occupation is buried deep in our psyche': the haunting exhibition showing Irish support for Palestinians

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/jul/11/gaza-exhibition-ireland-support-for-palestinians

‘Occupation is buried deep in our psyche’: the haunting exhibition showing Irish support for Palestinians

From checkpoint photos to a bullet-ridden car door memorialising the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab, a new show highlights the shared resistance between Irish and Palestinian artists

Caolán Magee
Fri 11 Jul 2025 10.27 EDT

There are no tanks or tear gas, no shattered apartment blocks or bloodied limbs. Just eyes – heavy and charcoal-drawn – staring in stillness and silence. They don’t accuse. They don’t beg. They simply watch. Peering out of pale, formless faces – a quiet demand to acknowledge their very existence.

This is Gazans’ View of the World, a stark monochrome piece by Palestinian artist Nabil Abughanima, one of more than 50 works now on display at Metamorphika Studio in Hackney, London. Together, they form Dlúthpháirtíocht – the Irish word for “solidarity” – an exhibition that spans continents, memories and borders, binding Palestinian and Irish histories into a single frame.

Born from a poem written by co-curator Seán Óg Ó Murchú in response to the war in Gaza, he describes the exhibition as “the world’s largest international exhibition of contemporary Irish artists” – while providing a safe refuge for the work of Palestinian artists living in exile.

Here, the art is not ornamental; it is urgent. Some artists fled Gaza only months ago, while the show itself is itinerant – travelling to Dublin, Cork and Belfast after its London leg ends on 19 July.

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