The presence of Gaza-born artist Mohammed Joha, who has experienced numerous wars and later left his country for safety, at the Venice Biennale is something that deserves special attention, especially against the backdrop of ongoing wars. He is one of the most notable Palestinian artists, turning painting into a unique artistic experience. His distinctive aesthetics, vigour, spontaneity, and expressiveness define his personal style.
To address concerns arising from his experience as a Palestinian who survived multiple conflicts in Gaza, his artworks combine a range of materials and techniques, including painting, photography, sculpture, and collage. His paintings frequently explore themes such as displacement, homeland, war, exile, and nostalgia.
Artist bio
Born in Gaza in 1978. Mohammed Joha currently lives and works between Paris and Marseille, having previously resided in several other European countries, including Italy and Norway. He earned his bachelor’s degree in art education from Al-Aqsa University in Gaza in 2003. In the same year, he joined the Summer Art Academy at the Khalid Shoman Foundation’s Darat al Funun in Amman, Jordan, under the supervision of the late renowned Syrian artist Marwan Kassab Bachi.
In 2004, Joha won the Young Artist of the Year Award (Hassan Hourani Prize) organised by the A. M. Qattan Foundation for his project “Clothesline,” whose artworks were destroyed during the ongoing genocidal war. He then participated in an artist residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, where he established himself in Europe and focused on developing his artistic practice. He has presented several solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions across the Arab world and Europe.
Art of Mohammed Joha
Some points Dana Husseino mentioned about the exhibition Houselessness, held at Zawyeh Gallery in Dubai, are now particularly noteworthy. Since the destruction of homes has become a common and usual occurrence as part of the ongoing wars in Israel-Palestine, the concept of a home has transformed into something that can be destroyed and lost. In this context, homelessness deserves special attention.
For the people of a territory like Palestine, who are always under siege from a nation like Israel, what is home? To a certain degree, home is associated with honesty and truth as a place of complete dependence, warmth, and confinement. Since home is an embodied experience rather than something that can be precisely recalled, we might argue that its influence endures in how we seek solace, a sense of belonging, and the feeling that a place holds us.
Gaza continues to be the focal point for Mohammed Joha, who fled Gaza and has been residing in Europe for around 20 years. Such a person’s paintings are living experiences rather than abstract ideas. The memory of Gaza is the foundation of his family, his resilience, and his losses, as he lost his own home with more than 500 paintings, which are now buried beneath the debris due to the ongoing slaughter. For him, “home” becomes a force that continues to inhabit itself rather than a real location, said Dana Husseino.
Mohammed Joha uses materials to recall his lost motherland. Joha uses collages made of mesh, cardboard, lace, paper, fabric, and even parts of his own clothes to create his artwork. In Joha’s paintings, he depicts the Palestinian territory, and architectural shapes of homes are often deliberately split into two horizontal sections, suggesting a horizon where memory meets loss and sky meets ground. There are no particular stories to tell about houses alone. They are only a continuation of the stories of the people who lived there. Each house, in that sense, is a cluster of hundreds of thousands of stories. But who, and when, will all that be lost? When one returns, when will it become storyless?
The view of houses visible in the skyline of a Palestinian city is made possible by a combination of materials that creates an abstract effect. In the watercolour series titled ‘Tent,’ political meanings are infused into temporary dwellings. In the painting Houseless 04 (2024), buildings packed with many colours resemble temporary sheds. These temporary homes that have changed permanently represent ‘unstable’ worlds. The instability is the main wound war inflicts, turning these homes into permanent dwellings. Joha’s paintings narrate the history of that wound becoming a lasting pain, a fixed and mental state. Through mixed media such as textiles, paper collage, and pen on canvas, the artist conveys what he wants to say in both abstract, linear and narrative forms.
Most Palestinians live in sheds made by joining tarpaulins, mats, and concrete, which are extremely temporary. Temporary settings become permanent. Where do homelessness and houselessness differ? ‘We are without houses, not without a home. Our homeland is Palestine,’ argues Mohammed Joha. That is why the artist does not title the paintings ‘Homelessness.’ It’s not only in the paintings but also in their titles that there is politics and a clear grasp of his time and place. Having titles for paintings is a material as well. They are not just names; sometimes they are slogans.
“Shifting surface” has become a commonplace issue. His creations convey both architectural and existential elements, which can be directly interpreted as a state of forced relocation in which lives are reconstructed with ever fewer resources and on ever riskier terrain. Through his artistic practice, Joha redefines collage as an architecture of rupture and reassembly rather than just a visual technique. This is both a method and a metaphor, expressing not just violence and destruction but also tenacity and resistance—a continuation of life under erasure.
Joha is an artist who says that his identity, artistic life, practice, thoughts, and convictions as both a human being and an artist were shaped in Gaza. When he is forced to leave, the connection to that city and its memories becomes even stronger, as evident in the paintings from the subsequent two decades. The artist recalls that the streets and schools burned by war and displacement became his first canvases. ‘For me, art remains a lifelong journey of discovery — a way to translate memory, emotion, and resilience into form and colour’ is not just a statement by the artist, but also a declaration of war with himself and his times.
Joha’s unique collage method, which uses cardboard, paper, and cloth, developed out of both necessity and purpose. Every artist uses resources to grow. It would not be incorrect to argue that the material’s involvement and history constitute art. For this reason, it is possible to state, “My relationship with materials and how I work with them is deeply connected to the subject of my research.”
Repurposing things in new contexts is more important than simply using them. One may argue that Joha’s tactile, multi-layered compositions offer both intimacy and universality through her powerful, obvious approach to materials.
Painting remains fundamental to art practice, despite the dominance of collage. While architecture serves as both a framework and a metaphor in Joha’s work, painting, as a fundamental form, is essential for defining and advancing composition. However, “Between the grey and amid the cramped, collaged settlements are glimpses of vivid colour” is an artist’s honest remark about his time, his era, and the issues his people face.
Against the backdrop of ongoing wars, migrations, and defences, a people continue to express themselves through their artists. It is art itself that sustains and carries them forward over the long term, and this truth is affirmed here as well. Houselessness is not a statement that can be dismissed as simply being without a home. It is both the energy to move forward and a way to define a people. Here, it is testified that no one will fail. These are each testimonies, proclamations, and the act of moving forward.
The houses in the artist’s paintings are meant for the Palestinian people to live in the future. They are doors and hopes towards the future. There, the unseen scenes of songs and life are open. There, the childhood of the once lost life is playing again.
When the artist who says, “I hope my message reaches the world, amplifying the voice of my people and my community. I want to remind everyone that art is, above all, a human message,” arrives at the Venice Biennale, that message will indeed reach the whole world. The resistance and life of the Palestinian people are multi-layered. Its strength doesn’t dissipate by fighting directly against the most powerful country in the world or against another nation. There, strength, weakness, and resistance are transformed into art.
Feature image: Mohammed Joha. Houseless No. 4. 2025. Acrylic and collage on canvas. 75 x 100 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Zawyeh Gallery
Krispin Joseph PX, a poet and journalist, completed an MFA in art history and visual studies at the University of Hyderabad and an MA in sociology and cultural anthropology from the Central European University, Vienna.
