Room 14: Powerful art from Palestinian prisoners on display in London

With just two days left, London’s Cornerstone Studios will have its doors open from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm for Room 14: Artworks from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement, an exhibition co-curated by Hazem Jamjoum, Lead Editor at Safarjal Press, and Tamara Al-Mashouk, Director of Studio12.

True to its title, the exhibition is framed against the backdrop of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement, which encompasses all those who have been imprisoned up until today, particularly following Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.

For context, today, around 10,000 Palestinian and Arab political prisoners are held by the Israeli regime, a quarter of whom are Palestinians from Gaza. Among them, around 3,500 are in administrative detention, meaning neither they nor their lawyers know the charges against them or the evidence used.

In addition, 5,000 Palestinians from Gaza have been forcibly disappeared, many of whom are believed to be held in secret sites such as the Sde Teiman torture camp. Sadly, since October 2023, at least 76 Palestinians have been killed while in captivity.

To document this ongoing abuse, the exhibition centres on the work of Alaziz Atef, a mixed-media artist specialising in calligraphy, clay, and portraiture.

Born in Al-Arroub refugee camp in 1996, Alaziz was held in Israel’s colonial prison system between 2021 and 2022, including time in the Ofer military prison, which has grown increasingly notorious since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

While he was moved between different rooms and sections during his imprisonment, Alaziz created most of the works on display at Cornerstone Studios in Room 14, Section 22 of Ofer Prison.

During his captivity, he created hundreds of pieces, mostly gifts for fellow prisoners, while the works in this exhibition — made for himself — were smuggled out by comrades to be passed to loved ones.

These pieces, all made with ballpoint pen and coffee on waraq sukkar (sugar packaging paper), are the result of both his effort and the support of other Palestinian prisoners. Drawing on decades of collective struggle, they helped him access materials, smuggle the works out, and provided the inspiration and strength to create them.

“With these artworks, I may have been the one holding the pen, but what made me able to put that pen and that paper together in those conditions was the others, and what they learned, developed, and passed down through the years of the Prisoners’ Movement,” Alaziz told The New Arab.

He added, “One of the aspects of khatt as an art form is that the prison guards can’t read it. Obvious resistance symbols would get confiscated, but with these works, we had words that represented us in many of the cells. When people ask me what artist residencies I’ve done, I tell them I did the Ofer Prison residency.”

'Cries of struggle and freedom'

To complement Alaziz’s work, the exhibition includes a sound installation by Palestinian artist Dirar Kalash, titled Who would listen? Who would animate my vocal cords and hear me now?

Named after the last will of martyred prisoner Kamal Abu Wa’ar, the installation condenses and amplifies sounds from daily life and lived reality.

“With this work, I sought to embody the sounds, voices, and silences of our political reality, and give them a presence that resonates with our political visions and demands,” Dirar shared with The New Arab.

“Kamal Abu Wa’ar was martyred on 10 November 2020 in the Zionist prisons. His last testament has resonated with me since then. The work does not simply ‘aestheticise’ his words; it is their immediate amplified resonance, triggering us, reminding us, and engaging our senses with the cries of struggle and freedom," he added. 

“With this work, I emphasise that genocide is not a point in time; it is not in the sum of numbers and names; it is in every grain of sound against oppression.” 

Spotlight on artworks

Highlighting notable works by Alaziz from the exhibition, Hazem shared several examples.

One piece, (وقد لجأت إلى حبه فلم أجد (يا حبيبي, features black ink text reading: “I sought refuge in his love but found none.”

As Hazem explained, the piece is a statement of frustrated despondency, capturing the inability to find relief that captivity produces.

One striking feature is the text in red, which reads “Ya habibi,” altogether roughly translating to “I sought refuge in his love but found none… baby.”

“This touch of levity and whimsy highlights a side of political prisoners often overlooked — their ability to bring light into the darkness using wit, humour, and eloquence, both for themselves, for one another, and for the wider community. I read it as a refusal to allow the hell that the colonisers have imposed upon them to make them forget their tenderness,” explained Hazem.

In sharing this, Hazem also pointed out that, on a formal level, Alaziz has used a style of khatt that is a hybrid of Diwani and Diwani Jaliy, while also adding a subtle touch of his own in how he renders the letters formed through small circles (waw, qaf, and fa’) that are not part of either style.

“This is not the hubris of the artist who thinks he will upend all accepted ways of doing things, but a practice that thoughtfully and deftly takes the foundations from a training that draws on centuries of tradition and adds the most subtle of touches to experiment with how to bring a new kind of beauty into the world.

"There is something here that is analogous to the Prisoners’ Movement, which has built an infrastructure of customs and modalities to enable steadfastness and resistance from within the prisons, while continually experimenting with new techniques to assess and learn from. This maintains the dynamism at the heart of why the Prisoners’ Movement is the true leadership of the Palestinian liberation struggle,” Hazem explained.

Shifting focus to collective grief, فلسطين رافعة خافضة, was created after the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces.

In the bottom right corner of the piece, Alaziz wrote: “To the soul of my beloved Shireen Abu Akleh, who lifted up Palestine so Palestine uplifted her,” echoing the two red squares in Diwani Jaliy style used as the dots for the letter ya’ in “Falastin” above, forming the phrase “Palestine raises up and brings down.”

Hazem explained, “Besides being a deeply moving tribute to the great journalist, this affirms the Prisoners’ Movement’s insistence that it will always remain a central part of the broader fabric of Palestinian society. Alaziz rendered the word 'Falastin' in Murabba' style, which works like pixels on a grid. A wonderful part of this piece is that he’s left the pencil markings of the grid as part of the work.

“He confessed to me that, while he agreed with me that the effect is aesthetically compelling, a key reason he kept those pencil marks was that he only had a tiny bit of eraser left on the one pencil he owned and didn’t want to risk using it on this piece in case he urgently needed it for a later one," he added. 

“This practice of making do with whatever little is available, I think, is a central part of the ethos of these works, something we’ve tried to reflect in the curation of the exhibition,” Hazem noted.

Finally, love emerges as a central theme in الحب… في الارض بعض من ما تصورنا …, which places the word al-hubb ('love') at the top, followed by a verse from Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani.

It reads: “On this earth are things we imagined that, had we not found them here, we would have had to create… and so we love.”

Reflecting on this piece, Hazem shared, “In almost every interview and conversation with captive and liberated prisoners, the centrality of love emerges as the force that enables them to remain steadfast despite the horrors of incarceration. This love takes many forms: love for one another and for their comrades outside, love for their mothers and families, and love for their country.

“I think this partly helps us understand why poetry, especially love poetry, features so prominently not only in these artworks but also in all the writings and interviews you’ll read and hear from the Prisoners’ Movement.”

Challenges and aims

Like any exhibition, the preparation of Room 14 did not come without challenges.

As Hazem put it: “The major obstacle we faced was finding an exhibition space with the courage and integrity to support us in conveying the voices of our political prisoners in the liberation struggle against the genocidal regime. Several venues rejected us, while others never responded. Some wanted us to focus solely on the formal and aesthetic aspects of the artworks, urging us to 'tone down the politics'.

“It was our good fortune that the newly established Studio12 stepped up — not only to host but also to co-curate the exhibition and help sharpen how we conveyed our message.”

When asked what he hopes visitors will take away from the exhibition, Hazem highlighted two points.

“First, I want people to understand that, in the last three years, the Israeli genocidal regime has gone to war against the Palestinian captives.

"All the hard-won victories of the Prisoners’ Movement have been rolled back: cells are overcrowded, illnesses are rampant with little to no medical care, prisoners are subjected to the cruellest and most depraved forms of torture and abuse around the clock, food is minimal and largely inedible, and family and lawyer visits are severely restricted.

"Over 10,000 Palestinians are being held captive, including 3,500 in administrative detention, meaning they do not know what they are being charged with or what evidence exists against them. Another 5,000 people from Gaza have been forcibly disappeared, with verified reports that Israel has set up secret torture centres across the country," he added. 

“The second thing we really want visitors to understand is that it’s not only Israel. The states that have closed ranks in support of Israel as it commits its ongoing genocide have resorted to expanding police powers and the practice of political incarceration to clamp down on dissent," Hazem continued. 

"More broadly, what we’re seeing is the slashing of public programmes that aimed to keep people healthy and housed, resulting in a plunge into poverty that leads to higher rates of crime and incarceration. Instead of taking care of their populations by providing social support, states are diverting resources toward policing and prisons to violently suppress the growing segments of the population who need such support.

"We want people to understand that state support for Israel’s genocide and the brutalisation of Palestinian captives is closely connected to these states’ repression of dissent and criminalisation of poverty," said Hazem. 

"The fight to free Palestine is the same fight for genuine democracy globally."

To close the exhibition on Saturday, 16 August, there will be a concert by renowned Palestinian musician Maysa Daw from 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm. Tickets can be purchased here.

Zainab Mehdi is The New Arab's Associate Editor and researcher specialising in governance, development, and conflict in the Middle East and North Africa region

Follow her on Instagram: @zaiamehdi_/@zainabmehdiwrites_