Laila Shawa’s (b. 1940 in Gaza; d. 2022 in London) lithograph series Walls of Gaza is rooted in a period that spans the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, encompassing the first Palestinian uprising and the signing of the Oslo Accords. Crucially, this work draws on Shawa’s on-the-ground documentation of the simple but fundamental ways in which the people of Gaza used walls to communicate with each other during media blackouts on Palestinian-controlled newspapers, television stations, and radio. Her works pointedly record the free-form exchange and widely divergent opinions represented in contending layers of spray paint, tar, and whitewash, which functioned as a makeshift public forum in the absence of a free press. The artist has further incorporated geometric shapes as well as color filters and additional imagery “that soften the impact of the image, highlight a pivotal point or render dramatically present shadows from a fading past.” The artist concludes: “Walls of Gaza remains unfinished, largely because the asymmetric confrontations between Israeli military forces and Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip continue into the present. Little has changed over the intervening three decades, while much has deteriorated further.”
