The Artists
Majed Shala
Majed was born in Gaza city to parents originally from Gaza. He holds a master’s degree in fine art, has worked as an art teacher at several institutions, and co-founded Shababeek (Windows) for Contemporary Art.
A week after the war began, threatening phone messages in the middle of the night forced Majed, his family, and their neighbors to leave their homes in northern Al-Rimal. Amid intense explosions and messages directing their movement, they continued fleeing from one place to another within Gaza city until dawn, when a message instructed them to head south. Majed and his extended family fled to Deir al-Balah, taking refuge in a relative’s home before moving to a tent in Al-Mawasi. They were displaced six times before returning to Al-Rimal, where they found the upper floor of their building bombed and the remaining apartments entirely burnt. They cleaned and repaired their apartment, reclaiming it as a livable space.
Al-Mawasi, watercolor on paper, 12” x 16”, 2024
Majed lived for two months in a tent in Al-Mawasi, near the shore of Khan-Younis. There, he gathered some papers and colors and began reflecting on their lived experience. He explains “I sought to give the work a visual dimension that opens a window onto hope amid this immense degree of suffering, creating a balance between the harshness of reality and the beauty of artistic expression… In times of catastrophe, art does not merely document pain; it preserves memory, gives suffering a voice, and plants in the heart a seed of hope that does not die.”
Empowered by Patience, watercolor and ink on paper, 12” x 16”, 2026
After returning home, Majed began creating surrealist drawings in which the cactus becomes a metaphor for patience, persistence, and survivance. This connection is embedded in Arabic itself: sabr, meaning patience, and sabbār, meaning cactus, share the same linguistic root. Majed brings together hybrid forms of cacti, human faces, animals, birds, memory, reality, and imagination, creating a visual conversation between human and land, pain and hope. He explains: “When patience is joined with faith and determination, it becomes the greatest strength a person possesses in the face of adversity—just as the cactus possesses the ability to remain in bloom at the heart of the desert.”
@majedshala