London exhibition throws stark light on tragedy in Gaza
Curators of the show at Tramps gallery juxtapose news footage of the crisis with installations, photographs and sculpture
A new exhibition in London throws the spotlight on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, presenting footage from the news channel Al Jazeera alongside a rarely seen work by the late Italian sculptor Lucio Fontana. An Exhibition as Record (until 12 December) at Tramps gallery is “an exhibition we want people to see [during Frieze week]”, says the gallery’s founder Parinaz Mogadassi.
The non-selling show comprises “four elements”, Mogadassi says, including a video featuring footage of a mock “press conference” held by children outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City dating from 7 November 2023. The footage broadcast by Al Jazeera shows around 20 children standing in the grounds of the hospital with a boy aged around ten acting as spokesperson and asking for protection.
Other works featured include Fontana’s 1941 sculpture of a lying figure ( Nudo femminile sdraiato ) placed in front of a photograph printed on a silver mirror. The image, taken in 2023 by Mohammed Salem, a Reuters photographer, shows the Palestinian woman Inas Abu Maamar cradling her dead five-year-old niece Saly.
“I assembled the mirror work with Mohammad Salem’s gut-wrenching photograph,” says Mogadassi. Asked why the show launched on the eve of Frieze, she says: “It’s a moment in the art calendar where the audience is the largest and most captive. I think at the very least our community must bear witness; that is the least we can do.”
The exhibition’s final room houses Short-Term, But Long-Term (2025), a photographic installation by the artist Federico Vespignani of 20 images taken from dating apps showing profiles of Israeli soldiers serving in Gaza. The men, their faces redacted, had photographed themselves inside homes and at sites destroyed during the conflict (more than 300 of the profile pictures were initially published by Vespignani last year).
Since Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023, which killed more than 1,200 Israelis and in which more than 250 people were taken hostage, nearly 73,000 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed in Gaza, according to data published by the World Health Organization in coordination with the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
