We Sees Fire:
Queer Art Against Genocide

FEATURE, JULY 2024

Through The Window (TTW), an online art network connecting queer artists, thinkers, and nightlife workers from Turkey, the Netherlands, and beyond, features artists directly responding to globally shared state censorship and denialism against the ongoing genocide in Palestine. They use their artistic tools to resist local and global silencing and business-as-usual attitudes, transforming their resistance into art.

originally published on Metropolis M 

In June, Queer for Palestine in New York organized a die-in at the Stonewall Inn, a landmark of queer liberation. Participants lay on the ground, draped in Palestinian flags and rainbow banners, symbolizing lives lost to both apartheid and homophobia. The alignment of queer and pro-Palestine movements was also visible in Amsterdam. On July 1st, queer activists held a solidarity march from the Homomonument to Dam Square, highlighting shared tactics of direct action and leveraging iconic symbols of resistance to underscore a universal fight against systemic oppression. During İstanbul Pride, held despite a city-wide ban, protestors ingeniously gathered elsewhere, raising Palestinian flags.

These trans-local and post-intersectional solidarity acts are not merely a convergence of marginalized voices but a robust transversality of struggles and aspirations. The publication ‘HIV & Palestine’ by What Would an HIV Doula Do? offers poignant insights into this alliance, highlighting how the queer community’s fight against systemic silence of the first AIDS crisis mirrors the current genocide in Palestine. The zine articulates, ‘Our struggles are inherently linked by the oppression we face and the resilience we manifest.

Alexis Lima, NEO TRAVESTI, 2024, photograpghy. Latex, costumes by vichos, recycled materials

It’s no surprise that Palestine is the theme of the fifth edition of Through The Window (TTW), a solidarity, collaboration, and art network connecting queer artists, thinkers, and nightlife workers from Turkey, the Netherlands, and beyond. Operating mainly online and on social media, TTW transcends mere artistic showcase; it creates communal spaces for expression and connection, addressing the need for support amidst escalating systematic violence against queer communities in Turkey. This state-sanctioned queerphobia reflects a broader policy aimed at obliterating and illegitimizing queer visibility. While writing this, the exhibition Turn and See Back: Revisiting Trans Revolutions in Turkey by the 10th Trans Pride Week Exhibition Collective was abruptly closed on July 11th by the Beyoğlu District Governorate. On the same day, trans activist İris Mozalar was detained over a post condemning a xenophobic attack against migrants in Turkey, underscoring the state’s punitive measures against queer activism.

Through The Window (TTW) features artists directly responding to globally shared state censorship and denialism against the ongoing genocide in Palestine. They use their artistic tools to resist local and global silencing and business-as-usual attitudes, transforming their resistance into art. This initiative is bringing together a diverse group of queer artists from Turkey, the Netherlands, South Africa, Peru, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. Several delve into their own countries’ histories of struggle, drawing poignant parallels with the Palestinian fight for liberation.

Susanne Khalil Yusef’s Trying to Keep it Kosher transforms her studio wall at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam into a canvas for uncensored expression. Amidst the systematic erasure of pro-Palestinian graffiti and stickers in Amsterdam, where recent pro-Palestinian protests have faced significant police action, Yusef’s wall becomes a sanctuary for unfiltered voices, painted by friends and visitors, featuring a neon light that reads ‘We want to live’ in Arabic. This piece underscores the necessity of safe spaces for free and collective expression against a backdrop of political repression and when the individual’s words fail to convey the pain.


Susanne Khalil Yusef, Untitled, 2024

ANDYMKOSI’s urban installation Heartbreaking News in Braamfischer uses materials in the colors of the Palestinian flag to create moments of encounter for the city’s residents. This work tests if locals recognize the colors and observe their engagement with the installation. The use of color over words emphasizes the straightforward reality: there is genocide, and Israel is the perpetrator. ANDYMKOSI’s use of color mirrors Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s Forbidden Colors, a 1988 work comprising four monochrome panels of the Palestinian flag. Torres asserted, ‘The combination of these colors can cause an arrest, a beating, a curfew, a shooting, or a news photograph,’ and continued, ‘Yet it is a fact that these forbidden colors, presented as a solitary act of consciousness here in SoHo, will not precipitate a similar reaction.’ Unfortunately, in 2024, these colors remain forbidden and can provoke severe reactions almost everywhere. If similar points of reflection were created in our communities, could we foster greater awareness and action?

Nisa Aslan aka kazzazede’s Is This Real? features three panels concealed with keffiyeh fish-net. Two have a poem, and one features an ASCII-generated opaque image layering a furry character, a donkey with a watermelon rind, and the AI-generated ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ following the June 2024 Rafah attack. The AI image became the most shared content during the conflict as it bypassed Instagram algorithms flagging real images of suffering. All eyes could only be on Rafah, virtually. This juxtaposition highlights the absurdity and tragedy of a world where a lazy donkey must be tempted by a watermelon to act, mirroring global complacency in the face of genocide.

PACHAQUEER’s Not a Minute of Silence is a video documenting the ‘Plantón Palestina Libre’ demonstration in Quito, Ecuador, where dissidents took to the streets to show queer resilience for Palestine. The footage, deemed ‘sensitive content’ and rendered less accessible by Instagram, captures the peaceful yet powerful protest on June 13, 2024, met with violent repression by the National Police’s Order Maintenance Unit. This work condemns state violence and the exacerbated phobia and misogyny activists face, proclaiming, ‘NOT A MINUTE OF SILENCE for the global genocide, NOT A MINUTE OF SILENCE for state violence.’

Some TTW artists utilize their Indigenous knowledge to create powerful connections between their local struggles and the Palestinian cause. Chris Luza merges memories of anti-dictatorial mobilizations in Peru with the Palestinian cause using watercolors on cotton paper. Luza reinterprets a portrait of a Chasqui (Inca messenger, a symbol of connection across vast distances), situating it in the present. The inclusion of the otorongo’s fur, representing the deity Chuquichinchay, a feline entity known as the protector of ‘Indians of two natures,’ underscores the ancestral roles of trans people and draws a profound connection between their historical functions and contemporary justice struggles.


Chris Luza, From the river to the sea, 2024, watercolors on cotton paper, 32x24 cm

Pelumi Adejumo’s Water Hymnal is a sound piece inspired by ‘From the River to the Sea,’ unjustly classified as hate speech. Adejumo delves into Afro-diasporic and West African songs venerating river deities and calling for liberation through water metaphors. These chants, from West African liberation movements, invoke deities like Oshun, the Yoruba goddess of water. By bridging African diasporic spiritual traditions with Palestinian resistance, Adejumo underscores water’s power as a symbol of life and freedom, echoing African and Palestinian struggles. Chase Rhys’ The Tower; Spirit, Spice and Sovereignty employs paper, ink, and spices to connect Black South Africa’s defiance against oppression with current resistance movements in Palestine, Congo, and Sudan. Rhys recalls his grandmother’s stories of apartheid-era displacement and her use of spices and herbs for metaphysical protection. The artist, following his grandmother’s recipes, uses karamonk, borrie, black mustard seed, and chili, associated with prosperity and strength, to neutralize The Tower card, symbolizing destruction and transformation.

Some participants of the project use DIY, trans-queer aesthetics, and return to their bodies to create pro-Palestinian image-statements. La Lola Rizo’s photograph shows Rizo standing poised, wearing a striking skirt mimicking the vibrant hues and patterns of a watermelon—red, white, and green fabric adorned with black diamond-shaped seeds—against the backdrop of untamed Volcan Momotombo. The image intertwines the kindred histories of Nicaragua and Palestine, both bound by oppression, imperialism, and enduring hope. This attire evokes notions of sustenance and life, while the bare-chested figure, ceremonially masked with glowing latex, serves as both a fetishistic mystery and a counter-surveillance tool. This figure becomes an icon of resistance and survival.

Seeds of Identity by Yana Hayik explores the symbolism of the Palestinian keffiyeh through the meticulous placement of watermelon seeds, visualizing the keffiyeh’s distinctive patterns while imbuing it with deeper emotional layers. Photographs depict an arm and torso covered in watermelon seeds lying atop a keffiyeh, mirroring its intricate black-and-white design. The keffiyeh, a symbol of Palestinian resistance and national identity, features patterns representing a fishing net, honeycomb, joining of hands, or barbed wire. When Israeli occupation authorities banned the Palestinian flag from 1967 until the Oslo Accords in 1993, the scarf took on potent symbolism. Creating these images was a meditative, meticulous process. Each seed was carefully placed, reflecting the artist’s deep engagement with its symbolic weight. This act can be seen as ritualistic, embodying sorrow, anger, and hope inherent in the Palestinian struggle. The seeds’ temporary placement highlights the fragility and impermanence of the resistance, the transient yet persistent fight for justice. The body positioned on the keffiyeh breaks the pattern’s uniformity, and the scattered seeds around the hand suggest movement and change, hinting at the ongoing nature of the struggle. The hand, partially covered by seeds, signifies the individual’s connection to their heritage.



Yana Hayik, Seeds of Identity, 2024, photography

Jodi Windvogel, Voices of Solidarity, 2024, photography

Despite powerful symbolic acts of pro-Palestinian solidarity, these efforts have yet to achieve the tangible change necessary to end genocidal violence and the apartheid regime in Palestine. This global war on pro-Palestinian activism aggressively targets symbols, revealing the profound threat even symbolic resistance poses to oppressive systems. In Germany, the red triangle has been banned, and the slogan ‘From the river to the sea’ is labeled as terrorism. Individuals worldwide face severe repercussions, losing their jobs for mere expressions of solidarity. The artists of TTW respond to these existing symbols—such as the watermelon, keffiyeh, and slogan—while also creating new ones that merge other struggles and indigenous knowledge. These acts of defiance underscore the harsh reality: liberation is a collective struggle, continuously thwarted by oppressive powers. However, they also affirm that true freedom for all oppressed groups remains an unwavering goal, one that must be pursued relentlessly from all the rivers to all the seas.