A Story You Now Hold: Narratives From Gaza

A Story You Now Hold: Narratives from Gaza is an interdisciplinary exhibition bringing together the work of contemporary Gazan artists alongside photographs and personal narratives from international healthcare workers who served in Gaza from 2024 to 2026. It asks what remains when homes, bodies, and institutions are threatened, and presents what cannot be occupied or erased: imagination, dignity, creativity, memory, and humanity’s capacity for connection.

Curated by first-time curator Nuha Alshabani as part of the ShowUp Cultural Infrastructure Program developing new curatorial voices, A Story You Now Hold grew from a simple request. During Dr. Alshabani’s 2025 medical mission to the Gaza Strip, Gazan healthcare workers and civilians asked for their stories to be carried beyond Gaza and be shared with the world. 

The exhibition explores the relationship between witness and imagination. It examines collective liberation, grief, resistance, and the enduring capacity to create meaning amidst genocide, occupation, and displacement. Documentary photographs and firsthand accounts offer moments of external observation, while paintings, drawings, and other contemporary artworks reveal interior landscapes of memory, grief, hope, identity, and survival. Together, these perspectives illuminate not only what has happened, but what continues to be felt, remembered, and imagined.