Dorgham Quraiqi, a newly married 28-year-old Palestinian artist working with the UK-based charity Hope and Play, was killed alongside his wife and brothers when Israeli airstrikes hit the ruins of their home in Gaza City’s Shuja’iya neighbourhood, where they were sheltering.
The couple and their relatives were killed in the early hours of 18 March as Israel launched intense surprise bombardments across Gaza, shattering a two-month ceasefire. According to Gaza’s health ministry, the overnight attacks killed more than 400 people, mostly women and children. The British foreign secretary David Lammy told parliament today that it appeared to be “the deadliest single day for Palestinians since the war began,” 17 months ago.
Despite facing difficulties and displacement, he was remembered by friends and colleagues as an artist who helped others and inspired hope. His figurative oil paintings were widely exhibited in Gaza and showed much talent. He volunteered at the Dar Al-Kalima University run Gaza Training Center where he helped implement a group mural in 2022, depicting journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, killed by the IDF in 2022.
Dorgham Quraiqi Image: Dorgham Quraiqi/Facebook
Quraiqi’s death, following the earlier loss of his sister in the war, has shocked his colleagues in both the charity and artistic communities.
“It’s a pretty heavy blow to obviously everybody who had interactions with Dorgham and knew him and knew his work,” Saskia Marsh, a trustee at Hope and Play, tells The Art Newspaper.
Marsh, a former UN official based in Gaza from 2006 to 2009, says the charity was founded 15 years ago “to bring hope and play to children who don’t have that.” Dedicated to supporting Palestinian children through education and trauma relief, the organisation adapted its efforts after the war began, shifting to provide emergency assistance such as food, water, while also offering creative activities. It also partnered with Shababeek for Contemporary Art, a Gaza-based art institute, and ran art workshops with both established and emerging Palestinian artists.
Quraiqi started working with the charity in June 2024 and was one of ten artists working with the NGO through Shababeek, helping children escape the horrors of war by expressing themselves through art. Marsh says the young artist described the activities as a way to “paint your emotions away.”
“There are these incredible people, like Dorgham, who were willing to risk their own lives to help their communities and sort of alleviate a little bit of suffering for a short while,” Marsh says. “Even in the middle of everything going on, there is huge creativity, there’s huge generosity of spirit,” she notes, adding that partnering with artists was particularly important because it revealed a different side of Gaza.
Quraiqi took part in a workshop in which an entire displacement camp came together to create a collage, “this is an opportunity for participants to express their soul, their love for Palestine, to mourn the loss of their homes and to reflect on what remains of their dreams.”
Dorgham Quraiqi had been working with the charity Hope and Play since summer 2024. His friends say he loved working with children and tried to come up with creative workshops to help them express themselves © Hope and Play
Before the war, the self-taught artist had taken part in a number of group exhibitions including Until the Chair Grows Wings at Shababeek. Quraiqi’s social media posts reveal that after Israel finally allowed people to return to their homes in the north of the enclave as part of the ceasefire agreement, he was confronted with what remained of his home and studio.
Posting pictures of his damaged artworks on Facebook at the end of February, he wrote, “They were part of my soul, of dreams I had long wished to share with an audience,” adding that the destruction was an attempt to erase memory, culture and humanity. “But as the saying goes, ‘Hope only dies with the death of the soul,’ and art is my soul.”
Shareef Sarhan, a co-founder of Shababeek tells The Art Newspaper he spoke to the artist just a few days before the attack. During their conversation, Sarhan says, Quraiqi expressed excitement about obtaining new art materials and shared his idea for a children’s workshop to “help change their mood and atmosphere.” “His death has definitely impacted Gaza’s art community. We lost a friend,” Sarhan says.
One of Quaraiqi’s close friends, an established artist who asked to remain anonymous, says the family returned to their former houses because, “those who have lived the humiliation of displacement will return and live on the ruins of their home.” The artist spent time with Quraiqi two nights before his death when he witnessed him buy a special treat for his new wife’s birthday. Having shared many years of friendship and long hours in the studio together the artist says, “I feel like I have lost my right arm.”
In 2023, the anonymous artist collaborated with Quaraiqi in the “Shrapnel of the City” workshop and exhibition, featuring 27 artists from across the Gaza Strip. He says Quaraiqi fled Israeli bombing many times: first to the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, where his injured mother was treated, to Rafah and then to the Al-Qarara Al-Gharbiya area near the beach.
But he made use of his nomadic existence to show films to children in refugee camps, partnering with the Palestinian NGO Film Lab and giving art classes affiliated with the Tamer Institute for Community Education.
According to an homage on the Facebook page of Film Lab, Quaraiqi was about to launch a new series of mobile movies for children in refugee camps “in continuation of his message of making cinema a space for dreams in a difficult reality.” His colleagues wrote, “The dreams he instilled in the hearts of children will remain a witness to his profound impact. We will not forget his passion, and the missiles will not erase his mark in the hearts of those who knew him.”
One of the last paintings Dergham Quraiqi created before the war began in 2024, according to his facebook Image: Dergham Quraiqi/Facebook
Marsh and Sarhan say they will continue their artistic activities with children in Gaza, despite the hole left behind by Quaraiqi’s death.
“All of this should not be in vain. All these deaths should not be in vain. What’s to come from this,” Marsh says. “Dorgham wouldn’t mind me saying, he also believed in this, that the only way out of this is creative expression, freedom, and security and dignity for everybody, Israelis and Palestinians alike. So let’s focus on how we get there,” she adds.
The small organisation’s activities in Gaza support around 10,000 people a month. But Marsh says the resumption of the war and Israel’s blockade on aid have driven up costs and made their partners’ work on the ground more difficult. Those wishing to support their efforts can donate through the charity’s website, and Marsh notes that the NGO’s trustees and operations outside of Gaza are on a volunteer basis and at their own costs.
