Youssef Abdelke’s Child from Gaza, 2023, is a direct response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza - 7 September 2023 till date. In this work, the artist confronts the human cost and injustice of the war through the image of a single child. Naked and lying on the floor, the child appears frightened and defenseless, embodying the most vulnerable victims of the genocide. Above him looms a disturbing figure: a beast with its jaws open, dripping saliva or blood, its body pierced with metal-like pipes similar to rifle nozzles or canons, transforming it into a hybrid of animal and war-machine. The drawing stages a stark opposition of predator and prey. Rendered in charcoal, the image feels heavy and fragile at once, as if drawn from ash.

Every detail heightens the sense of imbalance. The child’s nakedness signals vulnerability, helplessness, and innocence. The beast, both animal and machine, embodies violence in both its base and manipulated form. The metal pipes built into its body suggest that brutality is not instinctive but constructed as part of the machinery of war and systems designed to sustain violence. War here is not shown as random destruction, but as a deliberate and organized effort.

Abdelke is intentional in his choice of medium. He often employs charcoal in his works because the focus on black and white brings out the kind of rigidity he seeks in his compositions. This rigidity is brought to the forefront across many of his works, including this one, by his placement of the main elements of his composition at the center of the drawing, leaving the space around it as empty as possible (even empty of much light), thus creating a form of immobility and stability that Abdelke connects to a general preoccupation of Eastern artists, compared to European artists who tend to be more inclined to prioritize dynamism. For the artist, “when I place an element at the centre of an already square painting, that means I put my element in the most serene place, in its heart. Thus, I’m adding more stillness to an already still space.” The most important factor for Abdelke is that the painting is coherent and maintains a balance between its structure and the emotions it attempts to convey.

In Child from Gaza, the child represents innocence stripped bare, but also the countless children in Gaza whose lives are threatened by violence and erasure. Looming over him, the beast becomes the embodiment of war itself: grotesque, animalistic, and tied to the machinery of destruction. Charcoal, with its dark, ashen quality, evokes the atmosphere of mourning. Abdelke uses it to reflect Gaza’s destruction in stark black, fixing the child on paper as both symbol and witness facing annihilation.

Signed and dated in Arabic lower front right