On Monday 9 February 2026, the Palestinian Museum hosted the launch of Lilies of Gaza: Women Artists in Times of War in partnership with Dar Al-Kalima University and Birzeit University’s Department of English Language and Literature. The event drew researchers and artists as part of the book’s launch series, which began at Dar Al-Kalima University in Bethlehem and will continue in other cities.
Compiled by Inas Deeb and Rana Al-Batrawi, the book brings together the work and voices of 22 Gazan women artists amid the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza. Through personal texts, narratives, and first-hand testimonies, it foregrounds the persistence of artistic and literary production under conditions in which daily life itself remains under threat.
Contributions from Deeb, Al-Batrawi, Ehab Bseiso, Rania Jawad, Shareef Sarhan, Vera Tamari, and Hedaya Shamun explored the book’s research and artistic dimensions and its role as a documentary record that helps preserve Palestinian memory. The event also considered the interplay between pain and creativity, destruction and artistic creation, and creative practice and the lived realities of war.
The discussion reflected on visual art and writing as interconnected forms through which artists interpret violence and displacement and trace the precarity of everyday life. Speakers also underscored how cultural and academic partnerships sustain work of this kind and amplify its reach across Palestine and beyond.
Several of the artists represented in the book joined the event via Zoom from the besieged Gaza Strip, sharing first-hand accounts of their personal and creative experiences. They spoke of losing studios and artistic tools, and of holding on to their creative practice as daily life remained under threat. Their participation lent the event a powerful immediacy, connecting the audience gathered at the Museum with the artists’ lived realities in Gaza.
The event also featured a display of printed reproductions from the book, inviting visitors to engage more closely with the artists’ practices and the experiences behind them, while situating the works within their broader artistic and lived contexts.
Lilies of Gaza was published in Arabic and English by Dar Al-Kalima University Press, with support from the Rami Zahi Khoury Innovation and Entrepreneurship Hub. All proceeds from book sales will support the Gazan women artists featured in the book.
Lilies of Gaza is available at the Palestinian Museum Gift Shop. For orders through Dar Al-Kalima University Press, please contact ideeb@daralkalima.edu.ps.
