This series of paintings examines the politics of representation. They are based on stills from videos of Gazan detainees filmed and posted online by Israeli soldiers on 24 December 2023. The imagery captures the disturbing incident of Palestinian men being stripped naked and publicly humiliated by Israeli soldiers in Gaza. The act seems designed to reduce them to mere objects, akin to wild animals to be captured and controlled. The IDF itself succumbed to criticism and discharged the identified soldiers.

Yet, for some well-intentioned people, these images of detained Palestinian men are not the most effective images to draw sympathy and solidarity. They are not the “perfect victims” to quote Mohammed El-Kurd, the young Palestinian poet. El-Kurd speaks of the ‘politics of appeal,’ a term referring to the framework utilized by well-meaning journalists and cultural workers seeking to counter the portrayal of oppressed Palestinians as terrorists:

“Humanization is to 'women and children' Palestinians to death–to infantilize Palestinians in hopes of determining that, indeed, they deserve liberation… we must qualify our dead with reminders of their nonviolence, humane professions, and disabilities. A Palestinian man cannot just die. For him to be mourned, he must be in a wheelchair or developmentally delayed, a medical professional, or noticeably elderly at the very least. Even then, there are questions about the validity of his victimhood…”

— Mohammed El-Kurd: In conversation with the Forward Arts Foundation.