When I arrive at SOMArts just hours before the opening of its new show, From the River to the Bay, curator and artist Chris Gazaleh is painting the words of Gazan poet Refaat Alareer on the wall.
“If I die / you must live / to tell my story,” he writes in Arabic script in the colors of the Palestinian flag. The text of the poem frames pencil drawings by Gazaleh that feature solemn faces with pleading eyes. They’re surrounded by symbols of everyday Palestinian life — traditional tatreez embroidery, an oud, poppies and oranges — that telegraph Gazaleh’s vision of a vibrant past, and future, outside the Israeli occupation.
The stylized illustrations might be familiar to anyone who’s exited the Central Freeway at Market and Octavia and seen Gazaleh’s 3,000-square-foot mural of a woman looking over a crumbling West Bank wall. In it, she holds a key, symbolizing refugees’ right to return. It’s one of the many pieces of public art Gazaleh has painted in San Francisco over the past 20-plus years.
Gazaleh, whose grandparents are from Ramallah, has dedicated his art practice to uplifting the Palestinian struggle, despite risking alienation from mainstream art institutions, and having his murals repeatedly defaced. Though his work has sometimes caused controversy, SOMArts gave him and the ten other featured artists a blank canvas to express their views. SOMArts’ approach is a rarity in the art world; locally and nationally, museums have accompanied pro-Palestinian work with disclaimers or just not shown it at all.
In From the River to the Bay, his first exhibition as a curator, Gazaleh’s work hangs among a cohort of like-minded artists in a show of solidarity with the people of Gaza and the West Bank. The show arrives at a precarious time as Israel and Hamas negotiate the second phase of their ceasefire deal. On Tuesday, President Trump suggested that the U.S. should take over Gaza, displace its two million Palestinian residents and turn the territory into a “Riviera of the Middle East” — a move that political observers and human-rights advocates say amounts to a call for “ethnic cleansing.”
“We’re going to make art no matter what. We’re going to keep living no matter what,” Gazaleh says of Palestinian people’s resilience. “Let the people in Gaza be the testament to that, because they’ve been living through a 480-day genocide and are still singing and dancing and trying to keep themselves alive.”
Among the most stunning pieces in the show are a trio of colorful acrylic paintings by Palestinian artist Asma Ghanem, of richly rendered domestic scenes with eye-catching textile and tile patterns. In tranquil scenes like the one in Palestinian Childhood of a toddler riding a tricycle, Ghanem sensitively captures a sense of childhood innocence. It’s haunting to look at this piece and remember the enormous death toll of children in Gaza.
That focus on children and the next generation continues with photography by Spie, a veteran graffiti artist who came up in the Bay Area’s influential and politically active TDK crew. Before the pandemic, Spie traveled to Hebron and Bethlehem with Gazaleh as part of an advocacy group called Eyewitness Palestine, and From the River to the Bay features his photos of children from the trip.
“They just bring me joy every time,” Gazaleh says.
Spie also contributed a tent installation that recreates the student encampments that popped up on campuses all over the United States last fall, demanding that universities divest from weapons and surveillance manufacturers. (After a push from student activists, San Francisco State University added a commitment to human rights in its investment policy.)
“The students are very important because they also are the future,” Gazaleh says. “They’re going to be the future doctors and lawyers. … And in Gaza, they’re killing doctors. They’re killing lawyers. They’re killing artists, nurses, medics, police — anybody that has a job. … So there’s no separation.”
That trip with Spie wasn’t the first time Gazaleh traveled to the West Bank for advocacy and mural work. He also went in 2022 with Susan Greene, a member of a Jewish American artist collective called Breaking the Silence Mural Project. The collective has spent decades raising awareness about the apartheid-like conditions Palestinians face, and they were one of Gazaleh’s early inspirations. From the River to the Bay includes a print of their 1990 mural, Our Roots Are Still Alive, of a multi-generational Palestinian family cheering as a prison wall crumbles.
For Gazaleh as a curator, it was meaningful for the exhibition to feature artists from many different backgrounds — Palestinian, Jewish, Chicano, Asian American — in solidarity with Palestinians.
“It’s about showing our Bay Area culture,” he says, “our solidarity with the world.”
‘From the River to the Bay’ features the work of Ren Allathkani, Breaking the Silence Mural Project, Chris Gazaleh, Asma Ghanem, Hussam, Lucia Ippolito, Tarik Kazaleh, Eli Lippert, Diana Musa, SPIE and Maria Fernanda Vizcaino.
The show is on view at SOMArts Jan. 31–Mar. 30, with a closing reception on Mar. 27.