Art and poetry from Palestine were on display in the European Parliament as part of an exhibition organised by Lynn Boylan, the Sinn Féin MEP for Dublin.
The exhibit opened in the Strasbourg building of the European Parliament in late November, with an event attended by Dr. Amal Jadou, the Palestinian Ambassador to the European Union, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Traditional Palestinian Baklava and Kanafeh were provided to the event by the Dublin business ‘Kanafeh King’
Also in attendance were Dublin City councillor, Mícheál Mac Donncha and Fingal county councillor, Angela Donnelly, along with a number of Irish artists who contributed work to the exhibition.
The artists are from the group Irish Visual Artists for Gaza, a collective of Irish artists who raise funds to support displaced Palestinian families and orphans through their work.
Dealing with issues of exile and preserving culture and identity amid oppression and genocide are key parts of Palestinian art according to Boylan.
The Dublin MEP says that the art on display is a way of “reminding people of the humanity of Palestinians.”
“Unfortunately, it’s very easy for people to reduce Palestinians to numbers and statistics,” she said.
“With the news on our TV and social media, people can start to just think of Palestinians in terms of the number of aid trucks, the number of tents, or the number of body bags for murdered children and broken families.”
“With this being the annual week of international solidarity with Palestine, I wanted to open this exhibit to remind everyone that Palestinians are a people with a rich culture and identity.
Boylan said, “it important that we continue to stand side-by-side with the Palestinians, despite all of the recent international developments.”
“It was the Irish revolutionary, Roger Casement who said “self-government is our right, a thing born in us at birth, a thing no more to be doled out to us, or withheld from us, by another people than the right to life itself — than the right to feel the sun, or smell the flowers, or to love our kind.”