Gaza Gallery That Appeared in Documenta Was ‘Destroyed by Israeli Forces,’ Artists Say

A collective of Palestinian artists that prominently appeared in the 2022 edition of Documenta, a recurring art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany, said this week that one of the few art galleries in Gaza had been “bombed and destroyed by Israeli forces.”

The gallery/collective, known as Eltiqa, posted pictures of its destruction on Facebook two weeks ago. In the images, a smashed-up car appears amid rubble and broken shutters. A spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces did not respond to request for comment, and the IDF has not confirmed whether it was responsible for the destruction of the gallery.

Eltiqa itself had been included in Documenta by the Palestinian artists’ collective the Question of Funding, which “aims to rethink the economy of funding and how it affects cultural production both in Palestine and the world,” according to a description on the exhibition’s website.

In 2022, many seized on the collective’s presence in the exhibition, claiming that it was an example of an antisemitic, anti-Israel bias because Palestinians were being spotlit at the exclusion of Israelis. (Ruangrupa, the Indonesian collective that organized the show, denied that the exhibition was antisemitic; a panel appointed by Documenta to review the controversy found that the show acted as an “echo chamber” for anti-Israel sentiment.) In part because of the controversy surrounding the Question of Funding and other works in the show, the group’s presentations received attention from critics. Artist Mohammed Al-Hawajri, a Gazan artist participating as part of Eltiqa, drew notice for works that compared Picasso’s painting Guernica to the conflict in the city in which he is based.

Mohamed Abusal, another Eltiqa member who showed at Documenta, reposted the images of the gallery’s destruction on Facebook, noting that Eltiqa is one of the very few art spaces in Gaza.

On Wednesday, the Question of Funding wrote on Instagram that Eltiqa’s space had been “bombed and destroyed by Israeli forces.” The collective said it had been able to contact artists who run the gallery, and that these artists had asked around about the space’s state.

“They were told that local people have entered the gallery and took out paintings and furniture to make fire out of them to make heat and bake bread,” the Question of Funding wrote. “They said they are sad to know that their artworks have been burnt, but they also asked what is meaning of art now? Aren’t peoples’ lives far more important?”

Since October 7, when the militant group Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages, Israeli forces have continued to lead air strikes and a ground invasion on Gaza. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 20,000 Gazans have been killed in the process.