University of Galway will host a four-day exhibition exploring daily life in Gaza through personal testimony, photography, video, letters and children's artwork.
Titled 'The Lived Experience of Gaza', it runs from Wednesday, July 1 to Saturday, July 4 from 9.30am to 6pm in An Dánlann, the university's art gallery in the quadrangle. The exhibition centres on the experiences Palestinian entrepreneur, writer and public speaker Shirene Yaseen, whose family remains in Gaza.
Shirene Yaseen will travel from Doha in Qatar where she is based to open the exhibition and deliver a special address in the Michael D Higgins Auditorium in the Quadrangle of the University on Friday, July 3 at 10am, sharing her family's experience of survival and displacement. The event will be followed by a peace panel exploring what institutional protection means for human dignity and what its absence costs.
Through personal accounts and visual materials, the exhibition documents the realities of displacement, disrupted education, limited access to healthcare and the challenges facing families living amid the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis.
Shirene was five years old in 2000 when she first witnessed someone being killed. She has lived through more than seven wars since. Her story is not one that began in October 2023, it is the story of a lifetime. Since the most recent conflict began, Shirene’s family have been displaced nearly 20 times. They continue to live without functioning healthcare, schools, safety, and certainty of where they will sleep. Shirene left Gaza and cannot go back, and her family cannot leave.
"Gaza has become unliveable, but the world has moved on," said Shirene. "I carry a deep helplessness because I left and they cannot. I want people to understand that this is not over. My family is fighting to survive every day, and they deserve to be seen."
Among the stories featured in the exhibition is that of Shirene's sister, who gave birth on a staircase in the dark without medical assistance. The destruction of schools has left Shirene's nieces and nephews without access to education, and her family no longer have a home to return to and have been forced to move repeatedly, carrying only what they can.
"When I met Shirene, I knew this story had to come to Ireland," explained Sophie Sweeney, lecturer at University of Galway and organiser of the exhibition.
"There is a world of difference between following a conflict in the news and hearing directly from someone living it."
This event is part of the Thinking Beyond thought leadership series hosted by the JE Cairnes School of Business and Economics at University of Galway. Admission is free and registration is available at https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/sAU8mA6fsZ. Funding for the project was secured through the University of Galway Sustainability Engagement Fund.
Organisations, businesses, community groups and individuals interested in supporting the exhibition through sponsorship, promotion, volunteering or related activities are invited to contact Sophie Sweeney at [email protected].
