The new exhibition celebrating Irish-Palestinian solidarity

“It’s the moral obligation of the artist in society to speak truth to power,” Daragh Drake, Head of Exhibitions at art collective Dlúthpháirtíocht, tells Dazed. “If you fail to do this as an artist, you’ve broken the social contract. Your position is defunct. We don’t need artists like that – they don’t mean anything.”

Launching tonight (July 10) at MetaMorphika Studio in Hackney, Dlúthpháirtíocht’s new exhibition is a celebration of the long-standing tradition of solidarity between Palestine and Ireland. It is curated by Drake, a photographer, and artists Seán Óg Ó Murchú and Lottie Mac, and comes alongside a programme of events including DJ sets, traditional Irish music and a night of contemporary sounds from the Middle East organised in partnership with Arab magazine ILL-3AB. After its run in London, which ends on the 19th, the exhibition will travel to Cork, Dublin and Belfast.

Based between Ireland and London, Dlúthpháirtíocht was founded by Ó Murchú in 2023, specifically in response to what he describes as “the suffering of the Gazan people”. Last summer, it staged its first show at the P21 gallery in London, which became the largest ever international exhibition of contemporary Irish artists. Like its predecessor, the new exhibition is raising funds for Dignity for Palestine, a non-profit set up by Dr Musallam Abukhalil, which provides essential aid – everything from food to nappies – to people in Gaza.

While a few large installations can’t be reproduced, most of the pieces on display are available to buy as prints through Dlúthpháirtíocht’s online shop, alongside a t-shirt and tote bag produced in collaboration with Irish clothing brand Abú Clothing. All the proceeds will go to Dignity for Palestinians, with a few exceptions. “Some of the Palestinian artists we’re working with are still in Gaza or have family who are, so the sales of their work will go directly to them,” Daragh Drake, Dlúthpháirtíocht’s Head of Exhibitions, tells Dazed. 

“Pretty much all of the work on display ties back to Palestine, either in terms of being resistance work or a nod to the solidarity between Ireland and Palestine,” says Daragh. Artist Aoife Cawley is exhibiting a series of postcards – created a few years ago – depicting women who took part in the Irish War of Independence, many of whom, as Daragh notes, have been overlooked in historical accounts. For the exhibition, Cawley has produced a new set featuring revolutionary Palestinian women, including Asma Tubi, a poet, playwright and journalist who joined the 1930s Arab revolt against British colonial rule. Displayed side by side, the two series highlight the historical links between both struggles.

But the exhibition is above all a response to the ongoing genocide. Irish artist Spicebag and Scottish artist Council Baby have collaborated on a large-scale installation, a car door riddled with bullet holes and with the phrase “I’m afraid of the dark” printed on the side in Arabic. This is a reference to some of the last words spoken by Hind Rajab, a six year old Palestinian girl who was killed by Israeli while fleeing Gaza City in January 2024, after being stranded for hours in a car, crying for help and surrounded by the bodies of several of her relatives and two paramedics who’d tried to rescue her. 

Some of the work on display conveys how restrictive life in Gaza was even long before Israel’s current assault. Upon entering the gallery you are confronted with a series of imposing, large-scale photos from Seamus Murphy, an Irish photographer who has been working in the Middle East for 35 years: “Some of them were shot in the early hours of the morning at a border crossing in Gaza, back in 2005, with people attempting to walk into Israel. They go through this very scrutinising, demeaning and mortifying process,  on a daily basis, where they don’t know they’ll be allowed to get to where they need to go to work or will be able to bring back food to their families,” says Daragh. 

For Daragh, the relationship between Ireland and Palestine is more than just a case of two colonised peoples recognising each other – the historical connections are deeply specific. “I think that every single Irish person comes to realise ‘that could have been me – I could have been someone who was murdered by Cromwell. I could have been someone who starved by the side of the road during the famine’”, he says. “And when you look at the history of the war for independence, you see the exact same characters who were committing terrible crimes in Ireland going to Palestine and doing the same thing there – there’s a direct trajectory. The colonisation of Ireland was a test ground for the conditions of the Balfour declaration [a public statement, issued in 1917, in which the British government announced its support for a Jewish state in Palestine] and the eventual establishment of the state of Israel,” he says. To make the parallels even more specific, Ronald Storrs, the British governor of Palestine at the time of the Balfour Declaration, said that its purpose was to create a “little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.”

While the exhibition is rooted in that history, it is a product of the current moment – there are photographs of recent protests, a reference to the poet Refaat Alareer, killed by Israel in 2023, and work from Palestinian artists responding to the genocide as it happened – which shows that the connection between Ireland and Palestine is as alive and deeply felt as ever.