We Are Still Here: An Exhibition and Anthology of Resilience, Grief and Unshattered Hope from Gaza’s University Students opens on Saturday 14th February and runs until Saturday 21st March.
The exhibition is free and open to the public.
Bringing the voices of university students in Gaza to the heart of East Sussex, through a powerful exhibition of poetry, visual art & community response. In partnership with academics from the University of Sussex.
The exhibition is based on We Are Still Here, a recently published anthology featuring writing by students from Gaza’s universities. Through poems, short stories, essays and personal testimonies, the students document their experiences of displacement, loss and survival, writing amid ongoing violence, starvation and blockade.
Since the start of the most recent atrocities in Palestine, academics, activists and teachers from across Sussex have been in contact with hundreds of students in Gaza whose lives have been turned upside down, with their education disrupted and their universities destroyed. Over the past two years, efforts have been made to continue supporting their learning through online lessons and seminars in subjects including English, science and medicine.
It was through these sessions that We Are Still Here emerged – a book bringing together short and long stories, poems, essays and personal testimonies. The writing is raw and unfiltered, created during the past two years of violence and emerging from the depths of trauma, grief and lived experience.
Copies of the Anthology will be on display and for sale during the exhibition. All proceeds will go to the university students.
Alongside selected poems and visual material from the anthology, the exhibition will feature new work by Sussex artists who have created pieces in response to the students’ writing. These include paintings, music, textiles and mixed material works, offering creative interpretations of themes such as hope, grief, memory and resistance. There will also be an art installation from ArtBloc – a Brighton based mobile art exhibition of Art for Palestine featuring well known Palestinian artists.
The exhibition aims to create a space for reflection and solidarity, bringing together international student voices and the local creative community, and inviting visitors to engage with the realities of student life in Gaza through art and storytelling.
All proceeds connected to the project support students in Gaza, Palestine. Donations towards the students are welcomed and can be made here: Donate, https://chuffed.org/project/we-are-still-here
For further information regarding the art and poetry created by the university students from Gaza – please visit the following links
Art: https://we-are-still-here-students.teemill.com/
Book: https://darajapress.com/publication/we-are-still-here/
Gallery North 