The drawings from the Ravenna-based “This Shoe Was Not Red” and the photographs from “Dear Palestine” in the initiative promoted by Educaid and Assopace.
di Nunzio Festa per Corriere Romagna, 26 novembre 2024
“Voices for Gaza: Promoting Peace and Human Rights” delves into the perpetual war in Palestine, urging us to call for peace. The exhibition, set up in the modern wing of the Museum of the City of Rimini, features a collection of drawings and photographs: “This Shoe Was Not Red” by Gianluca Costantini and “Dear Palestine” by Roberta Micagli.
This awareness-raising initiative is no coincidence, as it is promoted by the association EducAid and the social organization Assopace Palestina, with the sponsorship of the Municipality of Rimini, in collaboration with the Emilia-Romagna Region and Civic Museums.
The necessarily immersive journey begins with the collection of drawings titled Ceasefire Now, a series created by Costantini starting October 7, 2023, to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Ravenna-born Costantini, who began his activist work in 2004 through the Indymedia portal—the only consistent and ongoing medium that documented the brutal repression of the Genoa counter-summit against the G8 in 2001—entrusts the bodies, clothing, and blood of Palestinian victims with the full force of conveying the state of constant siege. Condemned to death, if not to daily oppression.
“Tell me how you feel when you see someone burning” is the evocative question embedded in an artwork paying tribute to Mahasen Al-Khatib, a Palestinian cartoonist killed on October 18 in Jabalya. The focus shifts to the future with drawings dedicated to the will to resist—until peace is achieved. These include black-and-white depictions of embraces among Middle Eastern leaders and Biden, complete with a bright red heart above their heads.
Issa, the Words of Nonviolent Resistance is the title of the graphic novel published in Linus in August 2024, featuring illustrations by Costantini and text by journalist and writer Francesca Mannocchi. Particularly moving is the drawing dedicated to Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian poet. The narrative also remembers “the four-year-old Palestinian girl, Rahaf Ziad Abu Suweirh, so terrified by Israeli bombings near Nuseirat that she died of a heart attack.”
Another room is dedicated to last spring’s protest demonstrations at Columbia University, before returning to the Gaza Strip.
A geopolitical and emotional world brought even more vividly to life through the photographs of Roberta Micagli, who, after traveling the globe, chose to focus her lens on Middle Eastern themes. Here lies the meaning behind the wall with the praying child, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Damascus Gate in the same city, Armenian and Ethiopian Christians with their rituals, the heavy smiles of two young Israeli soldiers, the austere bed of Arafat in his guerrilla days, the girls of the region, and the elderly women who resemble so closely our own grandmothers, the grandmothers of the entire world.
The exhibition will remain open until December 15, 2024, with free admission.
