London’s P21 Gallery is a platform for Arab Arts and Culture. Betty Townley reports on their recent exhibition featuring over three hundred works by Gazan creatives.
PART I
“I don't know what to write anymore” writer and activist Larry Kramer told an AIDS forum in 1991, “... because I have said what I have said tonight, in one form or another, for ten fucking years.” I think about this quote often, what it means to feel your words are failing, to wake up everyday to more death and suffering, powerless to halt the devastation.
At the closing night of the exhibition ‘Stories for Gaza: We Are Not Numbers’, Dr. Rafeef Ziadah – a Palestinian poet, scholar, and activist - uttered the same refrain. She asked the crowd to put their phones down and to be present in the room. ‘I’m so sick of saying these poems’ she began. ‘I wrote them years ago and every year they just become more and more relevant’. When she recited her work, ‘it was so powerful’, exhibition co-curator Taya Amit remembers ‘she left us in silence and in tears.’
But at what point does an emotional reaction become one with the capacity to make change?
I sat down with Taya Amit and Almuhannad Allahham - curators of the May exhibition which brought stories from emerging Gazan writers to the P21 Gallery in London - to talk about resilience, the power of resistance poetry, and turning empathy into action.
We Are Not Numbers (WANN) was founded 10 years ago by Pam Bailey and Ahmed
Alnaouq. Bailey, an American journalist, was endeavouring to publish Alnaouq’s essay in the Western media. The work was in memory of his younger brother Ayman, killed at twenty-three by an Israeli airstrike. WANN, which pairs professional English writers with Gazan poets and storytellers, has now published over 1300 stories.
The exhibition, which displayed works by 350 contributors, was the first curatorial venture for Taya, an international development graduate whose focus is Israel’s history, and Almuhannad, a doctoral researcher at the University of Ghent.
When I ask how and why they became involved with We Are Not Numbers, Almuhannad centres on resilience. “What do I mean by resilient?” he elaborates. “They [the Palestinian people] have witnessed many critical events - like the first Nakba in 1948, the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank after the 1967 war, the war against refugee camps in Lebanon, the first and second intifada. And finally, the Gaza siege. All these events have brought nothing, but we still have many people who are resilient.”
This resilience also helped Taya cope with doubts about the exhibition after October 7th. She recalls a moment of hesitation, half way through their exhibition planning.
“I thought WANN would go into survival mode. I thought it might be ridiculous to do an exhibition in London with a war happening.”
“But [WANN’s] ethos stood stronger than ever. They remained determined to control their narrative, and not rely on a mainstream media that continuously fails them”.
Unsurprisingly, the two are deeply committed to the power of words as activism (or ‘artivism’ as they prefer) in the face of the powerful and destructive.
Almuhannad explains, “I can help in building the resilience of Gazans to give them the power to resist as much as possible. How can I do this? By knowing them; not just discovering them through the headlines or what we see in the news, but creating a connection.”
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PART 2
The notion of ‘knowing’ those suffering in Gaza is a complicated one. Visual images and testimonies of incomprehensible horror, dead children, torture, decomposed bodies, have so far failed to produce a uniform galvanising reaction. Routinely viewing images of horror can make us indifferent to what we’re seeing.
How vivid must terrible acts be presented for us to ‘see’? What do we have to take in, as a Western society, before things change? Social media gives us direct access to the abominations of war and occupation, but paralyses us at the same time. There is a layer of glass between viewer and subject. The barrier is unambiguous, impermeable. We have our places on either side, and we are limited to our respective roles of viewer and sufferer.
I, too, feel trapped and uneasy behind that glass screen. We share images and words and we write, protest, speak, boycott, donate. These are all actions that quell a feeling of powerlessness for a while, but not much more. The most shared Instagram image of the current situation in Rafah was AI-generated – as inhuman as something can be. Is widespread willingness to share something so empty an indicator of our shame? It is after all on our side of the glass that the weapons are being made.
I asked Taya and Almuhanad what they thought of the role of images in spreading awareness of the situation in Gaza.
“I would see words and videos and images all as complementary roles. We cannot depend only on words. We need them all” says Almuhannad.
‘Everyone knows how fucked up it is’ says Taya. ‘It’s more about feeling it rather than educating’.
Talking to Taya and Almuhannad about the value of exhibiting writing, I begin to understand that a moment where readers connect with the humanity of the writer can be a protest. “The dehumanisation of both sides – but mostly the Palestinian people – has been the most horrific weapon in this war” explains Taya. ‘We decided that we were going to exhibit all the stories that had been written across a ten-year period. We didn’t want it to be an exhibition about the current war exclusively’.
Aiming to reflect the vast changes needed to end the occupation in Palestine, they chose to display a huge volume of work. Readers would have to physically zoom in and out, breaking through the one-way, impersonal dynamic of viewing images online. They exhibited reams of writing, presenting a holistic view on Gaza and broader Palestine.
One wall of the exhibition displayed every story written by WANN’s creators – thousands, and too many to read. The effect of featuring such a mass of work was ‘claustrophobic’ says Taya, and intended to be so. ‘It was immersive; we covered a whole wall. It wasn’t for people to read, it was about impact.’ Elsewhere, selected quotes were displayed alongside the refrain ‘I am one amongst many’.
For We Are Not Numbers, working with English-speaking mentors is essential in crossing global barriers. The Arabic language has a long tradition of resistance poetry, which WANN’s writers continue. Did it feel like something was missing, for these Palestinian stories to be written in English?
In response, Taya recalls the words of artist Malak Mattar, addressing attendees on the event’s closing night:
“She said ‘you are all complicit. I say this not to aggravate you, I say it because you are all important.’”
“The problem is not only in the Middle East” Almuhannad expands, “it’s that people in the West are not listening. “Unfortunately, what is happening is because we are not able to deliver our message to the Western audience. We have people who can communicate with the Arabic people, with the 22 countries, but we don't have enough resources or instruments to communicate our stories to the people here in Europe. “
To move towards a free Palestine, the curators agree, will require vast, holistic change. The exhibition aimed to both reflect this and help bring it about. Taya recalls the closing night, featuring speeches and presentations by key figures.
“In this intimate space, you realise the power of words. Over an hour you have different people speaking and everyone moves through this emotional roller coaster. You're gripping onto their words. When it's something tragic you're heartbroken and then the slightest glimmer of a sentence that is hopeful lifts you up and you feel ‘okay, I can handle this’. For me it was a literal experience of what the power of words does when you really pay attention. The whole exhibition was to feel and to transform feeling into action.”
Only a space where pessimism, hope, tragedy, heartbreak co-exist – a space alien to images, only created by the words of storytelling – is capacious enough to hold everything at once.
“The loudest thing [the exhibition] could do is ignite a fire of feeling, Almuhannad concludes, “then someone chooses how they transform it.”
All profits from the exhibition, and any donations made by exhibit visitors, went directly to paying Gaza’s We Are Not Numbers contributors. You can find out more about the organisation, exhibition, and how to support WANN here.
Betty Townley is a freelance writer from South London, focusing on culture and the arts.
