The Palestinian artist channelling ‘rage, love and hope’ into her paintings

When Israel began its latest assault on Gaza, the colour drained from Malak Mattar’s work: the warm, vibrant tones for which she had become renowned were replaced by stark monochrome; she swapped depictions of everyday life in Palestine for apocalyptic scenes of death and despair. But the Gaza-born artist’s new solo show, Falasteen, presents a synthesis of these different periods of her career: the colours have made a cautious return, and while much of the work on display is as harrowing as its subject matter demands, there is also a note of hope, resilience and the possibility, or even inevitability, of freedom.

Mattar, whose work has been exhibited internationally, is also the author of a children’s book, Sitti’s Bird: A Gaza Story. Her 2024 painting “No Words” – an enormous black-and-white mural which recalls Picasso’s “Guernica” – has already become one of the definitive artistic responses to Israel’s genocide. Falasteen is a body of entirely new work she made while completing an MFA at Central Saint Martins, all of which is related to the ongoing genocide and forced displacement of the Palestinian people. It features large-scale paintings, a concertina book, and experimentations with techniques like photo transfer and collage, which Mattar had previously never used. It will be the first solo show by a Palestinian artist ever held at Central Saint Martins.

Below, we speak with Mattar about her experimentation with new techniques, how her practice has changed since October 2023, the role of art during a genocide, what kind of solidarity she’d like to see from the art world, and more.

Why did you reach for abstraction while making work at this time, depicting these terrible scenes?

Malak Mattar: One of the best things about being in an art school is that it’s a place of experimentation, and one of the techniques my tutor recommended I try is called photo transfer. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but I think it was a success. On the right side of a new mural, which will be premiered in the show, there is a photograph of dozens of half-naked men who had been abducted by [Israeli] soldiers, which I transferred into the painting. I also used different photographs of the destruction of an ambulance, which looks slightly abstract – a lot of viewers don’t even know it’s an ambulance, but it still conveys the intensity of fire and vehicles being destroyed. My work was always sharp and clear, but for the first time, I have used elements of abstraction.

One of the big things I realised is the power that abstraction has for the viewer: you look at the piece and you know it’s about destruction, you know there’s something going on, but it’s not direct – you have to think about it. For me, something having multiple layers of meaning can really be powerful.

How else has the genocide in Gaza changed your artistic practice? Your more recent work is a lot less colourful, for example.

Malak Mattar: I bought all the colours I normally used – the red, yellow, green – but the only ones I could see were black and white. I needed my work to reflect the time we live in and I needed to be honest with how I felt. It’s not only the colour that changed, but me as a person. This genocide has aged me decades. A lot of the things which have happened have shocked me to the core. I left Gaza the day before October 7, but my family stayed there for six months. It was a horrendous journey: losing contact with them because of the communication blackout, the displacement, moving from one place to another, the struggle to find food, and the bombardments that were falling every single minute. Having PTSD as a war survivor myself, I always assumed that if my family didn’t pick up the phone, they were dead. But that didn’t stop me from working, because I knew it was important for all of us, as witnesses and survivors, to create, to speak and to convey the messages that we needed to convey.

What do you think is the purpose of art during a genocide?

Malak Mattar: Well, I come from a long heritage of family who were writers, artists and poets. To be an artist in Gaza is to be seen as a voice, as someone who will bridge the gap between us and the rest of the world.  Every time I called my family, as I could hear the explosions in the background, my father would ask me, ‘What new works are you making? Are you telling our story?’ Every time I call my family members, they say, ‘You know what you should paint about? You should paint about the struggle of living in tents. You should paint about how people are cutting trees to be able to cook. You should paint about the flour massacre.’ So, in Gaza, you grow up with this commitment that, as an artist, you resist the occupation simply by painting, documenting, and expressing yourself. In the time of genocide, art is a powerful way of resisting the systematic dehumanisation of our people.

You’ve previously said that making art hasn’t been personally cathartic for you during this period. Why is that?

Malak Mattar: For a long time, the studio was a place of pain, somewhere I was constantly looking at images on the news, looking at family members who were still stuck in Gaza, and having to directly express what I was going through. The studio went from being a place of therapy and catharsis to a place where I was confronting pain in the most extreme ways. But that’s starting to change. Now I want some colour back; I want to give myself some hope. I used to think about my work as a kind of historical documentation, but really, that’s for historians to decide. I’ve realised that, as an artist, my priority is to express the rage, to express the memories, to express the love, to express the hope.

In the time of genocide, art is a powerful way of resisting the systematic dehumanisation of our people

Do you have a guiding principle as an artist?

Malak Mattar: I really hope that my work can communicate what we want as a people, which is simple: a life. Every day when I wake up to the news that a colleague of mine has been killed – an artist,  journalist or writer. I feel like we are being ethnically cleansed. Not many of us are still alive. When we speak about the most prolific and the most prominent artists in Gaza, most of them have been killed during the genocide: Heba Zaqout, Mahasen Al-Khatib, Majd Arandus, Fatema Hassouna, Mohammed Sami Qariqa. The goal of my work is to communicate this demand for life that has been stripped from us.

What kind of solidarity would you like to see from the art world?

Malak Mattar: Real solidarity lies in amplifying the voices of Palestine, working with Palestinians and centring them in exhibitions, panels and events. With some of the ‘solidarity’ that I face from people who call themselves activists, there is a sense of control: there is a sense of ‘do this, do that, don’t say this, don’t say that’. So it’s more about trusting us as people and as artists who have ethics, who have rights, and who should be respected in these places. But I would also say it’s about fighting the genocide, fighting against normalisation, and really being active advocates for Palestinian art and culture.

Malak Mattar’s Falasteen opens on May 15 at the Window Galleries of Central Saint Martins, London, N1C 4AA.