Eltiqa brings two decades of Gaza’s art and resistance to Dubai

Amid bombardment and displacement, Gaza’s longest-running art collective, Eltiqa, continues to create, producing work shaped by survival, memory, and collective resistance. Now, with their first major exhibition since the 2023 escalation, Eltiqa: How to Work Together? opens at the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai, curated by the Palestinian initiative The Question of Funding. The show spans over two decades of creative resistance, presenting more than 100 artworks by six core members: Mohamed Abusal, Abdel Raouf Al-Ajouri, Mohammed Al-Hawajri, Raed Issa, Dina Matar, and Sohail Salem.

“This exhibition is more than just a show, it’s a visual archive of survival,” says artist Sohail Salem, speaking from Gaza amid the echo of distant airstrikes. “Imagine writing while bombs explode around you. This is our daily rhythm.”

Eltiqa’s visual world doesn’t adhere to a single aesthetic. Instead, it pulses with contradiction, abstract and literal, fragile and defiant, deeply personal yet unmistakably collective. “Our visual language is born from how we live,” Salem explains. “Each of us brings his own vocabulary: houses, soil, memories, animals, war, loss, love. And we do it together, like seasons, changing but rooted.”

Abdel Raouf Al-Ajouri adds: “Our symbols repeat but never repeat themselves: walls, cages, doves, windows, slingshots, the child. These aren’t just images, they’re metaphors for our locked lives, our resistance, our hope.” The materials are often modest, sometimes even domestic, including hibiscus, coffee, or street-worn fabric. “Nothing in Gaza is neutral,” he says. “Even what we paint with carries memory.”

Formed in the early 2000s, Eltiqa has weathered wars, fragmentation, displacement, and loss. Yet what binds them is not only art, it’s presence. “Working together is a form of visual resistance,” Al-Ajouri reflects. “Working together, for us, isn’t just an artistic choice, it’s an existential stance. In the face of siege, displacement, and war, it becomes a form of visual resistance. It says: we’re still here, together, creating beauty, memory, and thought.”

The collective’s working method is deliberately loose. They don’t schedule meetings; someone simply shows up, opens the doors of the gallery, and others follow. What begins as art becomes conversation, and what begins as survival becomes solidarity. “Even when we argue,” Salem says, “there’s beauty in it. Every artist here keeps a respectful distance, enough to preserve individuality, close enough to remain family.”

Unlike many collectives, Eltiqa doesn’t dilute individual voice for the sake of harmony. “It’s like a dance,” says Al-Ajouri. “A constant movement between self and group. And yes, there’s tension. But that’s what keeps us honest. That’s where the energy comes from.”

The result is a rare model of artistic collaboration, one where disagreement fuels depth and personal pain sharpens collective clarity. “We’re not interested in making everything neat,” he adds. “We’re interested in making it real.”

The exhibition includes pieces that were hand-carried out of Gaza under siege, a logistical and emotional feat in itself. “Some of our works had to be smuggled,” says Salem. “This is not just art. It’s testimony. It’s what the news can’t show.”

To the international audience, Eltiqa offers a quiet but uncompromising message: Gaza is not only rubble. “There is life here. There is tenderness. There are people building, healing, drawing,” Al-Ajouri says. “This exhibition is not about victimhood. It’s a practice of freedom.”

To Palestinians in the diaspora, the show is something more intimate. “This exhibition is a message from the heart of Gaza,” says Salem. “It’s a window to the truth we live. Art becomes a voice for those who can’t speak, a cry for help from a people who deserve to live in peace and dignity.”