Conflict does more than destroy physical spaces. It extinguishes lives, erases histories and disrupts the collective memory of entire communities. In Gaza, where genocide has wrought catastrophic loss, the destruction of heritage adds another dimension of devastation. Yet amid the rubble, acts of archiving, art-making and storytelling persist.
Archiving Gaza in the Present began as a two-day conference in 2024 organised by the Arab British Centre and the Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS. A year later, a new publication edited by Venetia Porter and Dina Matar brings together voices from Palestine and beyond to document the cultural erasure and to explore how creative and archival practices resist it. Contributions from curators, architects, artists, journalists, lawyers and scholars capture Gaza’s once-vibrant cultural life – historic buildings, art centres, universities and museums that existed before October 2023 – now turned to rubble.
Featuring rich visual material – from fragmented WhatsApp testimonies to forensic documentation – and including artworks, maps and photographs, Archiving Gaza in the Present is both a living archive and a call to action. It is a vital resource for understanding Gaza’s cultural survival amid destruction.
Contributors: Vera Tamari, Selma Dabbagh, Salman Abu Sitta, Shareef Sarhan, Bahaa Abudaya, Salman Nawati, Marion Slitine, Mohamed Abusal, Sarvy Geranpayeh, Hazem Harb, Malak Mattar, Marc-André Haldimann, Jawdat Khoudary, Béatrice Blandin, Georgia Andreou, Yasmeen Elkhoudary, Ayman Hassouna, Seif El Rashidi and Leena Ghannam, Muneer Elbaz, Omar Al-Qattan, Aser El Saqqa, Kegham Djeghalian Jr, Dina Asfour, Rachel Dedman, Omar Shweiki, Mohammedwesam Amer, Chin-Chin Yap, Emily Tripp, Ghada Dimashk, Nadia Yaqub, Fred Pearce, Caitlin Procter, Lina Khamis, Fionnuala Rogers, Joanna Oyediran, Atef Alshaer, Shatha Safi, Hiba Omari, Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari.
Buy a copy of the book from Saqi.
Attend the launch event at P21 Gallery on 11 December.
About the Editors
Dina Matar is professor of Global Communication and Arab Media at SOAS, University of London and former Chair of Centre for Palestine Studies. She is editor, with Helga Tawil-Souri, of Producing Palestine: the Creative Production of Palestine through Contemporary Media (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), Gaza as Metaphor (Hurst, 2016), and author of What it Means to be Palestinian: Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood (I.B. Tauris, 2010).
Venetia Porter is former senior curator for Islamic and Contemporary Middle East art at the British Museum where she is now honorary research fellow. Her exhibitions include Hajj: journey to the heart of Islam (2012) and she was the lead curator for the Albukhary Foundation gallery of the Islamic World (opened 2018). She is a trustee of the Arab British Centre and her most recent publication is Artists Making Books: Poetry to Politics (British Museum Press 2023).
