Don't Stop Drawing: Visual Diaries of Solidarity from Gaza

Don't Stop Drawing - Visual diaries of solidarity with Gaza is a linear timeline-based exhibition of works by the two Lebanese artists and longtime friends: Mazen Kerbaj, living in Berlin, and Jana Traboulsi, living in Beirut. As a response to the ongoing devastating war on Gaza, the two artists started drawing and posting on their Instagram pages. The works expose Israel's injustice towards Palestinians through bold and anchoring imagery. The artists draw as a coping mechanism, as their only way to remain sane amid such humanitarian catastrophe. The works have been widely shared on social media, allowing thousands of people worldwide to express their own solidarity and to identify with the artists’ feelings and positions. Though the artists are living in two different cities, their hearts are in sync. Their works carry a hidden dialogue between two people who lived the wars in Lebanon and today witness, on their phone screens, the daily unbearable violence towards Palestinians. These drawings are the artists' way of demanding equality, peace and justice for Palestine and to counter their helplessness towards the inhumanity that this genocide has exposed.

Citizen Scientists (local researchers) from Ramallah, Beirut and London, working with University College London's Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) have been asked to respond to this work.

Curated by Mona El Hallak and Mayssa Jallad, the exhibition is part of the Lebanon Week conference at the IGP, running from March 19th to 22nd and entitled: “The Politics of Decolonial Investigations and the Ethics of Solidarity”.

The exhibition will be on view from 19 - 29 March at the P21 Gallery in London. The opening reception will be on Tuesday 19 March from 2-4pm.

Mazen Kerbaj is a Lebanese comics author, visual artist, and musician born in Beirut in 1975. He also works on selective illustration and design projects and has taught at the American University of Beirut. Kerbaj is the author of 15 books translated into more than ten languages and his work has been shown in galleries, museums and art fairs around the world. Mazen Kerbaj is widely considered as one of the initiators and key players of the Lebanese free improvisation and experimental music scene. As a trumpet player, he pushes the boundaries of the instrument beyond recognition.

Jana Traboulsi is a visual artist, designer and academic. She is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at the American University of Beirut where she teaches design and illustration studios, as well as theory and history. She is the co-founder and creative director of pan-Arab quarterly Bidayat and the artistic director of Snoubar Bayrout publishing house. In 2014, she co-founded Sigil, an art collective based in Beirut and New York. Her artist book The Book of Margins (2017), shortlisted for the Jameel Prize 2021, has been exhibited at the Victoria & Albert museum, London, and has been on show in Chile, Argentina and Dubai in 2022 and 2023.

Mona El Hallak is a Beirut-based architect and heritage preservation activist. In 2017, she joined the American University of Beirut as the director of the Neighborhood Initiative whose aim is to promote critical citizenship. She led several heritage preservation campaigns and succeeded in saving the Barakat Building, now Beit Beirut, a museum of memory and a cultural urban center. She is a member of APSAD (Association pour la Protection des Sites et Anciens Demeures au Liban) and ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites), a founding member of IRAB for the preservation of the Arab world’s musical archives; and of ZAKIRA for the promotion of photography and its role in documenting and preserving memory.

Mayssa Jallad is a researcher and Citizen Science Coordinator with PROCOL Lebanon since January 2019. She has trained close to 75 Citizen Scientists in fieldwork and survey co-design on prosperity, vulnerabilities and livelihoods. She has advised researcher-led interventions that involved several and diverse communities. Jallad is also a singer/songwriter. She writes research-based music and her work investigates the violent transformation of cities, just as her 1st album "Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels" (Ruptured/Six of Swords, 2023).