Algiers – The 17th edition of the International Comic Strip Festival in Algeria (FIBDA) is hosting a special exhibition featuring creative works from ten Palestinian artists under the theme “Palestinian Graphic Stories… Voices of Individuals, Cry of a Community.” The exhibition documents the memory of Gaza’s residents and narrates aspects of their suffering and resistance against displacement policies, erasure of memory, and dispossession from their land.
Held at the Riyadh El-Feth square in Algiers, the exhibition offers visitors a chance to witness the powerful reflections of ten Palestinian artists who responded to the oppression and crimes inflicted on the people of Gaza by the Zionist occupiers. Their works portray daily scenes of death and destruction planned with brutal and boundless violence.
The sequential drawings reconstruct the situation in occupied Palestine with images etched into the global imagination, linked with bombs, bloodshed, child cries, and the pleas of elders. These artworks break the silence of those complicit with the Zionist entity by presenting vibrant paintings that give voice to Palestine and its people.
Artists Leila Abdel Razek, Yasmin Omar Atta, Sara Shahada, Hassan Manasra, Hamza Abu Ayash, Khaled Jarada, Shahd Al-Shamali, Dania Al-Omari, Samir Harb, and Mohamed Sabaa’neh created works unified in their denunciation of silence and their use of bold lines depicting an inhuman occupier trying to steal Palestinian memory and culture. They give their drawn characters loud voices to tell touching human stories akin to scenes seen in news broadcasts.
Spanish artist Pedro Rojo Perez, co-organizer of the exhibition alongside Palestinian artist Mohamed Sabaa’neh, noted that the project was realized through cooperation with an NGO in Spain dedicated to conveying humanitarian and cultural issues regarding the Arab world to Spanish-speaking audiences. He highlighted the discovery of numerous talented Palestinian comic artists who capture their reality, pain, dreams, hopes, and vision for the future.
The exhibition centers around themes such as memory and documentation, with Palestinian graphic art playing a “crucial role” as a repository of cultural memory and historical documentation. It also serves as an artistic means to resist attempts to seize Palestinian culture and identity, reflecting issues of identity and belonging as well.
These works were gathered under a humanitarian initiative allowing Palestinian artists to share their stances and emotions with the world as creators capable of powerful expression and storytelling.
The 17th edition of FIBDA, concluding on Sunday, features artists from sixteen countries including Palestine, Spain, the USA, Japan, Tunisia, Mexico, with Egypt as the guest of honor
