Palestine Is Everywhere: A new book is demanding art world solidarity

“The fact that Palestinian art is rising to the surface of visibility today is an indicator of a significant shift in social consciousness,” Adam Rouhana, one of the artists featured in a new book, Palestine Is Everywhere, tells Dazed. “Art itself will not end genocide, but it does play a role in shaping the historical process and consolidating social expression into culture.”

Co-published by TBA21, Silver Press and The 87 Press, Palestine Is Everywhere is a major collection of essays, poems, protest chronicles and prison letters from Palestinians living in Gaza, published alongside art and photography. It includes contributions from Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a political activist and, until his recent release, Egypt’s most well-known political prisoner; artists Ahmad Zaghmouri, Maisara Baroud and Amal Al-Nakhala; writers Nasser Rabah, Mohammed R Mhawish, Sahar Khalifeh, Ahmed Bassiouny and Muhammad Al-Zaqzouq, among many others. Alongside the book, a new digital platform of the same name will showcase video, sound and multimedia works, intended to extend the project’s reach and cultivate a deep engagement with Palestinian art.

The idea for the book first took shape in December 2023. “It was a moment when public discourse had fractured,” Markus Reymann, co-director at art and advocacy foundation TBA21, tells Dazed. “Mainstream media offered a relentlessly one-sided narrative, while social media feeds became sites of violent polarisation, collapsing debate into declaration and defence. It felt almost impossible to think deeply, to hold space for complexity or compassion.”

As the genocide in Gaza continued to unfold, it became “painfully clear”, he says, that Palestinian artists, writers and thinkers were being systematically targeted, silenced and misrepresented. Palestine Is Everywhere was envisioned as a challenge to that injustice.  In 2024, TBA21 invited journalist, editor and author Skye Arundhati Thomas to join as an editor. “We share with Skye the conviction that culture must respond to crisis – not through neutrality, but through solidarity with those most at risk of erasure,” Reymann says. “Supporting Palestinian culture, within and beyond this book, is not an act of charity. It is a moral and political responsibility.”

This book exists because people inside Gaza, and across the diaspora, refused silence ... Every text, photograph, and drawing we received felt like an act of defiance, a declaration of life, courage, and creative will – Markus Reymann

Working with artists, writers, intellectuals and activists in Gaza presented a number of practical challenges, from blackouts and shattered infrastructure to the immense emotional strain of experiencing a genocide. “Communication was fragile, at times impossible. And yet, through that fragility, something profound took shape – a process grounded in trust, care, and friendship,” says Reymann. “This book exists because people inside Gaza, and across the diaspora, refused silence. They insisted on sharing their words, their images, their visions – even in the face of devastation. Every text, photograph, and drawing we received felt like an act of defiance, a declaration of life, courage, and creative will.”

Rouahana, a Palestinian-American photographer based between Jerusalem and London, contributed images from an ongoing body of work titled Blood Memories.  Shot in 35mm film and in stark black and white, the photos capture scenes of everyday life in the West Bank. “The name draws on the concept coined by Kiowa author N Scott Momaday, where memories are passed down genetically from generation to generation, shaping collective narrative and consciousness,” he explains.

With its wide range of contributors and eclectic mixture of prose, poetry and visuals, Palestine is Everywhere offers an illuminating insight into Palestinian culture as well as a corrective to the reductive narratives which still dominate mainstream discourse. Reymann hopes the book will serve as a call for the art world to support Palestinian cultural workers materially and publicly, to reject censorship, and to confront the structures of complicity that sustain injustice: “Solidarity must be active, not symbolic,” he says. “Listening is not enough.”

Palastine is Everwhere is available to buy here.