Artistic paintings and musical compositions from the womb of war and displacement, a space of hope and documentation of suffering in Gaza.

Despite what happened to the Strip throughout the period of the war that broke out in October 2023 until the announcement of a ceasefire in early October 2025, and the challenges that followed, some people were given the opportunity to display their creativity that depicted their lives during the war, such as the exhibition hosted by Al-Rimal School of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA)UNRWA), which turned into a center to shelter displaced people in Gaza City.

The art exhibition included drawings by displaced female students, including student Fatima Al-Zaanin, who was crying when a United Nations News correspondent in Gaza spoke to her as she described her paintings.

Pointing to one of her paintings, she said: “I drew a child named Muhammad. He wished he had one person left in his family, but he had no one left. I drew a child mourning the mother he lost.”.

As for the student, Nemat Habboub (17 years old), she was standing in front of one of her drawings, touching it with her hand. It was a painting she had drawn of the face of her mother, who was killed in the war.

Nemat said: “This is my mother’s painting. Thank God I painted it after I got over her separation, and I am still trying to get over the separation. I hope you all pray for her.”.

In that school, both Fatima and Nemat receive psychological support that enables them to continue their educational journey.

Exhibition inside a tent

Another young Palestinian woman established her own exhibition, inside one of the displacement tents in the heart of Gaza City, specifically in another UNRWA school that was turned into a center for sheltering the displaced.

She is Marah Khaled (18 years old) who told our correspondent: “My talent for drawing developed during the war. There was more psychological pressure and fear, so I had to devote all this energy to drawing.”.

Marah’s paintings are mostly black and white, and most of them depict the faces of people the young Palestinian woman passed by. A number of them express sadness and suffering, while panic, fear, and despair emerge from a number of others.

She explained that the reason is that most of her drawings are in black and white, “Because it reflects the negative energy that was inside me as a result of the war.”.

And that energy was transformed – as Marah said – into “Paintings about people killed in the war, journalists, the pain I experienced, hunger and starvation.”.

The lack of drawing materials did not stand in Marah’s way, as she used the soot found on cooking pots as ink for drawing, in light of the shortage of ink pens during the war.

Drawing hope on aid funds

This lack of materials and tools was an incentive for the visual artist Ahmed Muhanna to search for innovative ways to continue documenting the suffering of the people of Gaza through drawing.

Muhanna resorted to aid parcel boxes provided by the World Food Programme. “To convey to her the suffering we were going through.”.

The Palestinian artist’s work was turned into a traveling exhibition outside Gaza that includes 100 paintings he painted on food aid boxes that tell the story of his people.

Muhanna also used a little leftover coffee, tea, and other materials for drawing and coloring after his supplies ran out, so that the materials themselves became an embodiment of the themes he paints, which are steadfastness, perseverance, and an unbreakable will to extract beauty from the folds of destruction.

UN News had visited Muhanna in his studio in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza while he was painting one of his latest paintings.

Muhanna said while explaining what the painting, which depicts a mother and her three children, means: “We remember the saying of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: “On this earth there is nothing worth living.”. He also pointed to a sun surrounding the family inside the painting. “Which is hopeful.”.

“The birds of Gaza are singing”

Another art that was a means of expressing and confronting the bitter reality of war was music, which was used by the music teacher and coordinator at the Edward Said Institute of Music, Ahmed Abu Amsha, to entertain children and spread joy and happiness among them. He said it “Despite hunger, tragedy, and fear, we still have hope to sing and learn music.”.

Inside a displacement tent in Gaza City, Abu Amsha created a musical group called “Gaza Birds Singing.” The band includes displaced children who possess musical talents.

Abu Amsha said about the musical group: “This idea was born during our displacement to the Mawasi Khan Yunis area. There, I met male and female students who were very talented in music, so we created the team and trained them to play and sing. Thank God, we now sing national and traditional songs, and others that call for peace and love.”.

He reported that the band organized a number of concerts in the camps, noting that these activities were popular on social media and well received by people.

Ahmed Abu Amsha’s tent has turned into an art education center, where boys and girls of different ages gather to learn to play various musical instruments, including the guitar, flute, and tabla. Among them is his daughter, Yara Abu Amsha, who is training on the violin.

For Yara, music is more than just a hobby. Rather, it was a tool for adaptation during repeated displacement, as she said: “Every time I was displaced, I used to feel afraid, and my heart would start beating. Now, whenever I feel afraid, I turn to music.”.