Duaa Qishta
Art as Testimony and Activism
Of Palestinian origin from Gaza, she was born in 1991 in Saudi Arabia. She lives and works in France. A self-taught visual artist, her works have a strong human dimension and explore conflicts, wars, sieges, and the various crises that arise from them. Her works also convey a satirical message about political and social realities. The themes she addresses are closely linked to Palestinian identity. She works across a wide range of media: painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, photography, and video. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions and, in 2019, held her first solo show, Al-Awda Ice Cream, supported by the A.M. Qattan Foundation in Palestine. In 2019/2020, she was an artist-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Recently, she obtained a one-year residency from the Collège de France in the cities of Cherbourg, Grenoble, and Valence, in France.
Duaa Qishta, born in 1991 in Saudi Arabia and raised in the Gaza Strip, is a self-taught visual artist who now lives and works in France. Her art stems from direct experience of conflict, war, and exile, and manifests as an act of radical testimony and political denunciation. Indeed, crisis is the trigger for her artistic language: each work is shaped from a real wound, from a personal experience intertwined with the collective history of Palestine. The pain is never only personal but opens to a broader dimension, transforming into image, gesture, and critical reflection. Human trauma is processed as expressive material in a visual exploration that has the power to turn horror into active memory.
Her language is layered and profound, articulated through multiple expressive means: from painting to drawing, from sculpture to installation, and including photography and video. Each support becomes a field of experimentation. Her works oscillate between the abstract and the figurative, sometimes culminating in political satire—ironic and provocative—that aims to expose power dynamics, narrating the complexity of the Palestinian condition with a clear-eyed but never cynical perspective.
Her works reflect the constant tension between the individual and the collective, between the personal dimension of trauma and the broader context of national identity. Waiting, loss, exile, and hope are recurring themes, told with a sensitivity capable of moving the viewer’s conscience. Themes such as waiting, loss, exile, and hope continually recur, conveyed with a sensitivity that touches those who observe and opens to sharing.
Palestinian identity is not only evoked; it is lived, embodied, and questioned through every creative gesture.
For Duaa Qishta, art is a political and civil act. As she herself affirms: “Art is my way of transforming pain into strength, memory into resistance.”
Through her works, she gives voice to the invisible, creating a space of listening and recognition where silent human trauma becomes a manifesto. Her international artistic residencies, from Paris to the Collège de France, have allowed her to amplify this voice, carrying it beyond geographical and cultural borders without losing the depth and truth of her testimony
@ Elettra Stamboulis
See more https://duaa-qishta.weebly.com/
Works
Artists
