Hope is a four-letter word. As is Gaza, rage, care, camp and fund. These words are by no stretch the most complex in the English language – yet we stumble over them, misdirect them, and misspeak. There is something poetic in the size of a word and the scale of its meaning, or how some words almost defy meaning and are ruled by instinct. To love. To long. To care. To rage. We are never really taught what they mean, but rather, they are exemplary and inherited. This is intrinsic knowledge and perhaps what it means to be human.
Gaza is not a verb like those above, but there is something intrinsic about wanting to defend it. Gaza is a proper noun that holds space and one that some refuse to learn. It is not an example. It is a home that stands as a living ruin littered with encampments and broken bodies. It is past the brink, under attack, and abandoned by the Western powers for unforgivable biases and undisclosed policies. Gaza is in the air, it is in the ground, it is present, and it will have a future. Other four-letter words like stop and halt seem to be missing from the political vocabulary, and so again, we witness an event of “never again”.
I wish empathy and compassion were four-letter words, but we have help, safe, and soft. Sure, these words simplify the necessities at hand, but they are also prompts about how to act. How can we expand words to their full meaning, how can we keep an eye from turning blind, and who still lives?
Hope and Other Four Letter Words is a fundraising raffle exhibition and an attempt to rearrange this string of words – to find continuity in allyship through numbers, words, and symbolism. The exhibition features the work of 30 artists and creates a generative network whereby the public is invited to purchase a ticket of £100 and, with it, the chance of winning an artwork. The funds for the raffle will be donated in its entirety to Alaa (28) and Montasir (35), who live in Gaza with their children: Hanan (9), Ahmad (7), & Lana (5). The hope is that these funds will allow this family and their extended network the means to survive and escape Gaza. This is one family of many in an ongoing conflict, but it is a start and a stand of scale.
The arts have long been given the responsibility of activism, unfairly so at times, given artists’ ability to translate marginality and read contemporary society for what it is. The artists featured here are generous in their offerings. Hope is a four-letter word, and so are the arts. Together, there is something to be said for small acts as the most meaningful.
Words by Nathalie Viruly
