Depicting the horror in Gaza from a child's perspective
"HOME – the HeART of Gaza" is an exhibition of kid's drawings living through the destruction of their homeland, now showing in Shandon.
Féile Butler, an architect from Sligo, has long been active in the pro-Palestine movement in Ireland, and it was through her campaigning on social media that she came to know Mohammed Timraz.
As she explained in a recent interview, her Instagram feed was quickly filled with pro-Palestinian images and messages shortly after Israel’s ground war in Gaza, which followed Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
Hamas killed around 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages in that attack. Since then, Israeli forces have killed over 50,000 Gazans, roughly 2.1% of the territory’s pre-war population of 2.3 million.
“I started following a lot of Palestinian accounts, so my Instagram was wall-to-wall coverage of Palestine,” said Féile.
“Then Mohammed found me. He’s a café owner—or was. His café was bombed about two or three weeks into the genocide,” she explained.
“At that time, the borders were still open, and people were raising money to leave,” she said. Mohammed had told her he did not want to abandon his homeland but instead stay and help Palestinians. To do this, he had turned to social media to raise funds, which is how he connected with Féile.
While she admitted she was sceptical at first, the pair clicked. As she learned more about his plight, she sent him money and became involved with his community in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza.
Over time, she learned more about Mohammed, and Féile’s teenage daughter started writing pen-pal letters to some of the children in Deir al-Balah.
“My daughter was then getting to know them, and she started sending them art to cheer them up, and they started sending art back. And that is kind of the genesis of it,” Féile said, noting that the pictures the children in Gaza were making depicted the bleakness of the horrors they were living through.
At that moment, Féile knew there was an opportunity to bring wider attention to the horror in Gaza in a way that hadn't been seen before.
"I was like, 'OK, we have to share this.' It was such an intimate insight into horror - kids drawing things they shouldn't ever even have to think about," she said.
HOME – The HeART of Gaza, the exhibition that developed from those drawings, has been touring nationally and internationally since 2024. Féile got in touch with Dermot Browne, curator of Crane Visual at the Firkin Crane.
Coincidentally, Dermot had been looking to host a Palestine-related exhibition for some time, and there was an element of serendipity when Féile contacted him. The level of support for Palestine in Cork was something Dermot saw as beneficial for the exhibition.
"Cork has a strong base of Palestinian support. There's great solidarity in the community," he said, noting the commitment of ordinary people who pour onto the streets of Cork city and towns across the country for weekly pro-Palestine marches.
“There are a lot of children coming through here for dance classes, so the exhibition has had a great impact, especially on younger people seeing it," Dermot said of the exhibition.
As a curator, Dermot has enhanced the imagery. He also contacted Izz Café, who subsequently became involved in designing the exhibition space.
"I brought in Eman Alkarajeh, who's from Izz Café and is also a trained interior designer. So I asked her to advise me on making this look like a Palestinian home - that was her contribution to the exhibition."
"And then I found a second-hand shop downtown," he said. "These home elements come from that second-hand shop. They really help contextualise the exhibition – these could be pieces from a home that gets lost or destroyed, or items someone might use to rebuild after the conflict."
HOME – the HeART of Gaza runs until May 3 in the Musgrave Theatre in Firkin Crane on John Redmond Street. More info here.
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