The Polish artist recreates the Gaza reality from Israeli war criminal TikToks

WARSAW: A new exhibition about Gaza opened in the Polish capital Warsaw over the weekend, recreating videos of atrocities posted on social media by Israeli soldiers who committed them.

“With Deepest Sympathy” features the work of Igor Dobrowolski, a sculptor and painter whose art has touched on themes of physical and economic violence, war crimes and genocide for years.

It began with a performance in which the artist, blindfolded, face covered and hands tied with cable ties, knelt on the concrete floor next to child-sized shrouds, where he could not move for seven hours like the Palestinian men in the countless videos released by were shared online by their armed captors.

“I treat oppressed people so much that it matters to me,” Dobrowolski told Arab News. “When you treat others like that, it’s hard to bear when they face such immense injustice.”

He was surrounded by his paintings that illustrated the stories of atrocities reported throughout the year: Israel’s deadly attack on Gaza – or what is commonly referred to as the first “livestreamed genocide.”

On the other side, LCD screens showed videos of Dobrowolski directing some of the many clips Israeli troops have posted on TikTok since the war began. In it they documented how they blew up residential buildings and schools, looted houses and mistreated civilians – all war crimes under the Geneva Convention.

Dubbed the “most moral army in the world,” the series also refers to the shocking footage that has been circulating online following Israeli attacks on the population of Gaza, including recently in which displaced people housed in tents were burned alive.

As the hours passed, people came closer to the artist, some to take videos, others to check on him. At one point a woman, unable to bear the sight, tried to untie his hands. At another meeting, Palestinian Ambassador Mahmoud Khalifa knelt and hugged him.

“These works reflect the pain, the martyrdom of the people who experience it… This voice is very loud, I think it should reach everyone,” he said. “Thank you very much. We can feel this solidarity, we can feel this support.”

Since last year, Dobrowolski has held numerous solo demonstrations in front of the Israeli, U.S. and German embassies in Warsaw, as well as at monuments such as the Berlin Wall and the Auschwitz concentration camp.

With banners such as “Israel is exploiting the memory of the Holocaust to commit genocide,” “Israel is doing to the Palestinians what Germany did to the Jews,” he stood alone, often for hours, in the cold and rain.

But he is not alone in his cause because he knows that his family will always have his back.

“I am depressed and scared but full of admiration for my child,” his mother Teresa told Arab News. “No matter what he does, we will stand by him the whole way.”

Dobrowolski has received threats because of his work and admits he often fears for his future as solidarity with Palestinians, particularly those in Gaza, is largely silenced and harshly suppressed.

“I realize how powerful the forces we are fighting are,” he said. “However, I know what is right and what is wrong, and I know that I should do something even if I have many excuses not to do it. But I just close my eyes and do it. As Chris Hedges said, “I don’t fight fascists because I’ll win; I fight against fascists because they are fascists.’”

The artist, whose work has been exhibited at the Maddox Gallery in the United Kingdom and the Gin Huang Gallery in Taiwan, has recently had his visibility limited on social media platforms, which regularly ban content related to Palestine.

For the curator of his Warsaw exhibition, this was another reason to hold the exhibition despite warnings of “risk”.

It is a way to expand the reach of “content that is constantly subject to manipulation and censorship,” said Karolina Kliszewska of Cliche Gallery.

“Art is the only area of ​​freedom at this moment… I believe that this represents a risk in the sense that more people will wake up to this kind of performance and the boldness of the creator restoring meaning and meaning of the term ‘committed art’.”