QASIMI’s homage to Palestine and Lebanon

In the face of injustice, metaphor, subtlety, and reading between the lines are futile. Understanding this fundamentally, the Emirati label QASIMI has made blatancy a civic duty: such is the purpose of their Palestine hoodie and Lebanon t-shirt. Each goes beyond taking inspiration from an evocative historic photograph—they are nearly exact replicas of the articles of clothing shown in these images.

The Palestine hoodie draws from a photograph of a Black man being arrested at a Black Lives Matter demonstration while wearing a simple black t-shirt, PALESTINE printed in white block letters on his chest. The Lebanon t-shirt draws from those worn by journalists in Lebanon during the 1982 Siege of Beirut, reading DON’T SHOOT in English, French, and Arabic in bright red.

Originally published in Dazed MENA issue 00 | Order here

These two images, though from different times and places, are in conversation with each other, speaking to the interconnectedness of global liberation struggles. PALESTINE symbolises the oneness of the forces that subjugate oppressed peoples everywhere. DON’T SHOOT, the last words of so many Lebanese, Palestinian, and Black people at the hands of this systemic violence, honoured by QASIMI.

Originally published in Dazed MENA issue 00 | Order here